A United States appeals court upheld a jury's $83.3 million penalty against President Donald Trump on Monday, September 8, for defaming author E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found to have sexually assaulted. Carroll, 81, alleged that Trump defamed her in 2019, when she first made her assault allegations public, by saying she "is not my type."
In 2023, another federal jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996 and subsequently defaming her in 2022, when he called her a "complete con job." Trump was not required to attend the trial or to testify. However, he used the case to generate heated media coverage and to fuel his claims of being victimized as he campaigned for a return to the White House.
"We hold that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury's duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case," the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit wrote.
'Substantial financial penalty'
The January 2024 order consisted of $65 million in punitive damages, after the jury found Trump acted maliciously in his many public comments about Carroll, $7.3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million to pay for an online campaign to repair Carroll's reputation. The civil order, which prompted an audible gasp in the federal court, far exceeded the more than $10 million in damages for defamation that Carroll had sought.
Trump, whom a jury found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a separate federal civil case in New York, had, at the time, used his Truth Social platform to fire off a spate of insulting messages attacking Carroll, the trial and the judge, whom he called "an extremely abusive individual."
Jurors were shown Trump's October 2022 deposition, during which he confused a picture of Carroll for his former wife, Marla Maples, which threatened to cast doubt on his claim that Carroll was not his "type."
"We agree with the district court that the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty," the appeals court ruled on September 8.