Donald Trump Sexually Abused and Defamed E. Jean Carroll, Jury Finds

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A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct in recent years, but this is the only allegation upheld by a jury.

In the civil case, a federal jury of six men and three women found that Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine writer, said Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her nearly 30 years ago in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room. store in Manhattan. However, the jury did not find that he raped her, as she has long claimed.

The jury, in returning the verdict before three o’clock in the afternoon, also found that Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency, has criticized Ms. Carroll in October when he posted a statement on his Truth Social platform calling his case a complete con job and a Hoax and a lie. His lawyer said he plans to appeal.

The lawyers of Mr. Trumps did not call witnesses, and he never appeared at the trial to hear Ms. Carroll, who sued her last year, delivering visceral testimony about the attack that she says ended her romantic life forever.

On Tuesday, Ms. Carroll as a court clerk read the verdict aloud, his nod grew louder as the clerk said Mr. Trump is liable for defamation. He walked out of the courthouse smiling from ear to ear, hand in hand with his attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan. A woman shouted at Ms. Carroll, You are so brave and beautiful. Ms. answered. Carroll, Thank you, thank you very much.

In a later statement, he said: I filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and get my life back. Now, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not only for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.

For decades, Mr. Trump projecting the image of a man irresistible to women, engineering tabloid headlines like Best Sex Ive Ever Had, appearing in the introduction of a 1999 Playboy magazine centerfold video and boasting in an exchange captured on video about how , as a celebrity, he can get female genitalia with impunity. Now the jury branded him not a Lothario but an abuser.

Its unanimous verdict came after just under three hours of deliberation. The findings are civil, not criminal, meaning Mr. Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time.

In a Truth Social post after the verdict, Mr. Trump that he does not know Ms. Carroll: I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a shame a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!

His lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said outside the courthouse that the case will be appealed. He also defended the disappearance of Mr. Trump in the courtroom and his decision not to testify in his own defense.

It’s a circus environment, and having him here is more of a circus, Mr. Tacopina said.

He mentioned that Mr. Trump accused Ms. Carrolls in a video deposition his attorneys played for the jury. He also said that the lawyers of Ms. Carrolls to play the Access Hollywood recording for the jury, in which Mr. Trump bragging in vulgar terms about sexually assaulting women.

And he complained about the decision of the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, to have an anonymous jury hear the case, withholding their names even from the lawyers.

There were things that happened in this case that were beyond the pale, said Mr. Tacopina, who also complained about what he said was the bias shown by the court.

Once Mr. Judge Kaplan was challenged and even filed a motion seeking a mistrial based on widespread, unfair and prejudicial decisions based in part on what he described as the judges improperly upholding the objections of Ms. Carrolls, who argued that his questions were argumentative.

At one point, Judge Kaplan quoted the definition of an argumentative question from the Blacks Law Dictionary, reading it aloud to Mr. Tacopina.

During his instructions to the jury Tuesday, the judge explained their three options for finding Mr. Trump liable for battery, meaning an attack on Ms. Carroll: that he raped her, sexually abused her or forcibly touched her. A unanimous vote will confirm that Ms. Carroll proved more likely than not that he committed an offense, the judge explained.

In a criminal case, when jurors are asked to assess guilt, they must meet the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is not clear why jurors chose the lesser offense of abuse over rape. Sexual abuse is defined in New York as subjecting someone to sexual intercourse without consent. Rape is defined under state law as sexual intercourse without consent that involves any penetration of the genitals into the genital opening.

During the trial, Ms. Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine who is well known in Manhattan media circles, testified that the attack followed a chance encounter one night at Bergdorfs, a fashionable department store on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Trump, he said, asked him to help him buy a gift for a female friend.

They ended up in the lingerie section, where he motioned her into a dressing room, closed the door and began assaulting her. He pushed her against the wall and, using his weight to pin her down, pulled her pantyhose down and forced his fingers into her clit and then, she said, her clit.

He pushed back, stamped with his heels and used his knee to push Mr. Trump from him, and he fled the store. Other than telling two friends, she kept the encounter a secret for more than 20 years until she revealed it in a 2019 book excerpt in New York magazine.

Ms. Carroll and 10 other witnesses called on his behalf testified during the two-week trial. They included friends Lisa Birnbach, a journalist and author, and Carol Martin, a former TV anchor to whom he confided almost immediately after the attack, telling them what Mr. Trump had done. Two other women testified that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted them years ago in ways similar to the way Ms. Carroll being attacked.

Ms. was able to Carroll brought her lawsuit after New York State last year enacted a new law that gives victims of adult sexual abuse a one-year grace period to sue the people they say abused them, even for a long time. when the criminal statute of limitations expired.

For too long, survivors of sexual assault have faced a wall of doubt and intimidation, said her lawyer, Ms. Kaplan, after the verdict. We hope and believe that today’s verdict will be an important step in breaking down that wall.

While Mr. Trump has avoided trial, he has repeatedly attacked Ms. Carroll from outside the courtroom during the trial, first on Truth Social and last week in an interview from a golf course in Ireland, where he suggested he would return to New York to testify in his own defense. In the end, he didn’t.

In his closing argument, Mr. Tacopina argued that there was no need for Mr. Trump to appear, because the incident at the Bergdorfs never happened. He said he presented his clients defense through his cross-examination of Ms. Carroll and his witnesses.

If something is completely made up,” Mr. Tacopina told the jury, the only way to defend yourself against that accusation is by challenging the people who made it up and the story itself.

During this cross-examination, one area he focused on was the testimony of Ms. Carrolls that he did not scream during the attack.

I didn’t scream, he replied, adding that he was in a state of panic. I fought, he said. You can’t beat me by not yelling.

Mr. answered Tacopina: I’m not beating you. I’m asking you, Ms. Carroll.

No, interjected Ms. Carroll. He said one of the reasons women don’t come forward is because they always ask why you don’t scream. Some women shouted. Some women don’t. It calms women down.

Ms. Carroll, his voice rising as he testified, said, I’m telling you, he raped me, whether I screamed or not.

The ruling comes as Mr. Trump faces a flurry of legal action. In April, he pleaded not guilty to fraud charges in New York stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, and he faces a civil fraud charge brought by the New Yorks attorney general.

Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for attempted interference in the 2020 election, and a federal special counsel is examining the discovery of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as his role in the events leading up to January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all cases, and has argued that the lawsuits and investigations are meant to drag him down.

Ms. Carroll, during his testimony, was asked by another of his lawyers, Michael J. Ferrara, if he was glad that he had spoken publicly about what Mr. Trump or regretted doing so.

I’ve regretted it almost a hundred times, but in the end, getting my day in court is finally all mine, he said. I’m glad I told my story in court.

Nate Schweber, Hurubie Meko and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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