Appeals court won’t reconsider ruling that Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll $5M in sex abuse case

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its ruling upholding a $5 million civil judgment against President Donald Trump in a civil lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a writer in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

In an 8-2 vote Friday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to rehear arguments in his challenge to the jury’s finding that he sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022.

Carroll testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack after they playfully entered the store’s dressing room.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the verdict in December, rejecting Trump’s claims that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s decisions spoiled the trial, including allowing two other Trump sexual abuse accusers to testify.

The women said Trump committed similar acts against them in the 1970s and in 2005. Trump denied all three women’s allegations.

In an opinion Friday, four judges voting to reject rehearing wrote: “Simply re-litigating a case is not an appropriate use” of the process.

“In those rare instances in which a case warrants our collective consideration, it is almost always because it involves a question of exceptional importance,” or a conflict between precedent and the appellate panel’s opinion, Judges Myrna Pérez, Eunice C. Lee, Beth Robinson and Sarah A.L. Merriam wrote.

All four were appointed by President Joe Biden, Trump’s one-time Democratic rival.

The two dissenting judges, Trump appointees, Steven J. Menashi and Michael H. Park, wrote that the trial “consisted of a series of indefensible evidentiary rulings.”

“The result was a jury verdict based on impermissible character evidence and few reliable facts,” they wrote. “No one can have any confidence that the jury would have returned the same verdict if the normal rules of evidence had been applied.”

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement: “E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today’s decision.”

“Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation,” said Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.

Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack ever happened. He briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial last year that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.

Kaplan presided over both trials and instructed the second jury to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll.

Arguments in that appeal are set for June 24.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

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