Jury says Donald Trump must pay add’l $83.3M to E. Jean Carroll

E. Jean Carroll leaves Federal court on Friday, January 26, 2024, in New York. A jury has awarded an additional $83.3 million to Carroll, who says former President Donald Trump damaged her reputation by calling her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

NEW YORK — A jury ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in additional damages to the longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll on Friday, delivering a stinging, expensive rebuke to the former president who has continued to attack Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store.

The award, when coupled with a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict in 2023 from another jury in a case brought by Carroll, raised the amount that Trump must pay her to $88.3 million. Protesting vigorously, he said he would appeal.

Carroll clutched her lawyers’ hands and smiled as the seven-man, two-woman jury delivered its verdict. Emotional afterward, she shared a three-way hug with her attorneys. She declined to comment as she left the Manhattan federal courthouse.

Trump had attended the trial earlier in the day but stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments read by Carroll’s attorney. He returned for his own attorney’s closing argument and a portion of the deliberations but left the courthouse a half hour before the verdict was read.

“Absolutely ridiculous!” he said in a statement shortly afterward. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon.”

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It was the second time in nine months that a civil jury returned a verdict related to Carroll’s claim that a flirtatious, chance encounter with Trump in 1996 at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store ended violently. She said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights, and forced himself on her.

In May, a different jury awarded Carroll $5 million. It found Trump not liable for rape, but responsible for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her by claiming she made it up. He is appealing that award, too.

Trump is also awaiting a verdict in a New York civil fraud trial, where state lawyers are seeking the return of $370 million in what they say were ill-gotten gains from loans and deals made using financial statements that exaggerated his wealth.

READ: Trump set to face jury over sex abuse and defamation claims

As for Trump’s ability to pay, he reported having about $294 million in cash or cash equivalents on his most recent annual financial statement, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. Testifying at his civil fraud trial last November, he Trump boasted: “I have very little debt, and I have a lot of cash.”

Trump skipped the first Carroll trial. He later expressed regret for not attending and insisted on testifying in the second trial, though the judge limited what he could say, ruling he had missed his chance to argue that he was innocent. He spent only a few minutes on the witness stand Thursday, during which he denied attacking Carroll, then left court grumbling “this is not America.”