NEW YORK –
A federal judge in New York on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial after a jury awarded $83.3 million in damages to a magazine columnist who sued the former president for defamation for reporting her claim. that he had sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan. department stores a lie.
The judge rejected the former president’s claims that compensatory and punitive damages awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll in January were excessive.
The January verdict came after Carroll, 80, an author and former Elle magazine advice columnist, found that Trump’s public statements about her had led to death threats.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said in his ruling Thursday that the jury was entitled to find “the degree of reprehensibility” of Trump’s attacks on Carroll on social media to be high.
“Far from being purely ‘defensive,’ there was evidence that Mr. Trump used the office of the presidency – the loudest ‘bullying pulpit’ in the United States and possibly the world – to issue multiple statements chastising Ms. Carroll as a political figure and financially motivated liar, insinuating that she was too unattractive for him to sexually assault her, and threatening that she would ‘pay dearly’ for speaking out,” Kaplan said.
The decision was the second time a civil jury returned a verdict related to Carroll’s claim that a 1996 encounter with Trump in Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room ended violently. She said Trump slammed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.
A different jury awarded Carroll $5 million in May 2023. It found Trump not liable for rape, but responsible for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her by claiming she made it up. He is also appealing that award.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that she was “pleased but not surprised” by the decision by the judge, who is not related.
A spokesman for Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said she was confident the decision would be overturned on appeal.
The decision came as Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, spent the day in a criminal courtroom where he is on trial for money payments allegedly made to an adult film star in a scheme to cover up negative stories that Trump feared they would hurt his 2016 presidential campaign. He has pleaded not guilty and says the stories were false.