Appeals court upholds E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3M defamation judgment against Trump

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NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks and public statements against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, calling the jury’s damages awards “fair and reasonable.”

A three-judge panel, citing hundreds of death threats Carroll faced, said the case record supported the trial judge’s “determination that ‘the degree of reprehensibility’ of Mr. Trump’s conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented.”

Trump had argued the damages were unreasonably excessive, particularly a $65 million punitive damage award, and pushed for a new trial after the Supreme Court expanded presidential immunity.

But the appeals court roundly rejected those arguments, writing that Trump’s “extraordinary and unprecedented” broadsides against Carroll, 81, justified the steep award, given “the unique and egregious facts of this case.”

Lawyers for Trump responded through a spokesperson to a request for comment by calling for “an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes.” The case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

In its ruling, the 2nd Circuit said there is “ample evidence” that Trump was recklessly indifferent to Carroll’s health and safety after “castigating Ms. Carroll as a politically and financially motivated liar” and “insinuating that she was too unattractive for him to have sexually assaulted” and would “pay dearly” for speaking out.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision, saying in a statement that the appeals court affirmed that “Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not.” Noting the threats to her client, Kaplan said they “look forward to an end to the appellate process.”

At trial, Carroll testified she feared for her safety after receiving hundreds of death threats and losing her decadeslong career at Elle magazine.

The ruling centered on the second — and far more expensive — of two defamation awards issued to Carroll over Trump’s yearslong attacks on her character, which began after she accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of sexually assaulting her decades earlier at a Manhattan department store.

In her memoir and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room.

Carroll said Trump slammed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.

At the initial trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape as defined under New York law.

Trump repeatedly denied the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said Carroll was “not my type.”

The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged attack and statements Trump made denying after his first presidency ended that it had happened.

After that first verdict, the court conducted a second trial with a new jury for the sole purpose of deciding damages for statements Trump made attacking Carroll’s character and truthfulness while he was president in 2019.

Trump skipped the first trial but attended the second, which took place during his 2024 presidential run. He portrayed the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to smear him and prevent him from regaining the White House.

His lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from claiming before the jury that he was innocent. The judge said that issue had been settled by the first jury and didn’t need to be revisited.

On Monday, the appeals court agreed, saying the trial judge “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 2nd Circuit noted that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them “more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself,” the appeals court said. “In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’”

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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington, D.C., and Larry Neumeister in New York City contributed to this report.