Donald Trump, the former president who is already facing 91 criminal indictments for election subversion, retention of classified documents and hush-money payments to a porn star, suffered another significant legal setback on Wednesday when a federal judge ruled in favor of E. Jean Caroll, the writer against whom Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and fined $5 million for defamation, in a second defamation case.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who last month dismissed Trump's counterclaim against Carroll, again found the ex-president liable for making defamatory statements in a summary judgment handed down Wednesday. Kaplan's ruling does not give Trump's attorneys room to re-examine Carroll's core allegations of rape or defamation. With the decision finding the majority of the defamation case in Carroll's favor, the trial, set to be held in January, will be limited to determining damages. Kaplan also rejected Trump's argument that any future damages be capped.
"[T]he jury found that Mr. Trump knew that his statement that Ms. Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior purposes was false or that he acted with reckless disregard to whether it was false," Kaplan wrote. "Whether Mr. Trump made the 2019 statements with actual malice raises the same issue."
In May, Trump was found liable of defamation and sexual battery, under a law giving survivors of past assaults a one-year window to act.
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Trump loses to E. Jean Carroll . . . AGAIN! Accountability IS coming home to roost, first in civil case and then in the criminal cases. Trump’s walls continue to crumble. Let the accountability flood in. pic.twitter.com/zuwLWbwNcE
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) September 6, 2023
"Accountability IS coming home to roost, first in civil case and then in the criminal cases. Trump's walls continue to crumble. Let the accountability flood in," wrote former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on X, formerly known as Twitter.
A trial is set to begin in New York on Jan. 15 — the same day as the Iowa Republican caucus.
As another former federal prosecutor, Joyce Allen, pointed out, the damages must be high enough this time to deter Trump from repeating his defamation of Carroll, as he did after the first trial.
Carroll's lawyer can ask for damages sufficient to prevent a repeat of what Trump did after the last trial--repeating his defamatory comments the day after the verdict. What number will be high enough to prevent the man who can't control his mouth from doing it again? https://t.co/bly8ZKxaks
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) September 6, 2023
Carroll first said Trump assaulted her – in a changing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s – in a book in 2019.
Wednesday's ruling comes after a federal judge found last week that Rudy Giuliani is liable for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers.
