Former President Donald Trump has appealed a recent ruling that dismissed his defamation claim against writer E. Jean Carroll. His lawyers filed a notice of appeal on Aug. 10.
President Trump accused the writer of defaming him when she accused him of rape in a media interview after a jury in a civil case she filed against him didn’t find him liable for rape.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed President Trump’s defamation claim on Aug. 7, saying that the jury did find the former president liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll in a manner that would be colloquially considered rape, even if it didn’t fulfill the legal definition of rape in the state of New York.
A jury in May concluded that Mr. Trump sexually abused Carroll in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the 1990s. Ms. Carroll could not recall the exact year in which the incident occurred, but described it in detail and presented witnesses who confirmed parts of her story.
The jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million in damages, including $3 million for President Trump’s defaming her by accusing her of making up her story in order to sell her book.
President Trump appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has yet to pick up the case.
The case required establishing the claim by “a preponderance of the evidence”—meaning more likely than not, rather than the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement to establish guilt in criminal cases.
Ms. Carroll filed the suit in 2022 after New York legislators passed a bill that gave victims of certain sexual offenses a one-year window to file civil lawsuits against alleged offenders.
Ms. Carroll also has a second defamation suit pending against president Trump that she filed in 2020 and which seeks upwards of $10 million in damages. The trial is scheduled for January 2024. It was in this case that President Trump pursued his defamation counterclaim against Ms. Carroll.
