By LARRY NEUMEISTER (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — A jury discovered Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing recommendation columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that would hang-out the previous president as he campaigns to regain the White House.
The verdict was introduced in a federal courtroom in New York City on the primary day of jury deliberations. Jurors rejected Carroll’s claims that she was raped, however discovered Trump responsible for sexual abuse and for defaming Carroll after she made her allegations public.
Trump selected to not attend the civil trial and was absent when the decision was learn.
Carroll nodded as the decision was learn. Afterward, her legal professionals put their arms round her, and he or she hugged supporters within the gallery, smiling via tears.
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook palms with Carroll and hugged her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll might be heard laughing and crying.
Trump instantly lashed out with an announcement on his social media web site, claiming once more that he doesn’t know Carroll and referring to the decision as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”
The trial’s final result was a validation for Carroll, considered one of greater than a dozen girls who accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in 2019 together with her allegation that the Republican raped her within the dressing room of a fancy Manhattan division retailer.
Trump, 76, denied it, saying he by no means encountered Carroll on the retailer and didn’t know her. He has referred to as her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to promote a memoir.
Carroll, 79, had sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she mentioned had been Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.
The trial revisited the lightning-rod subject of Trump’s conduct towards girls.
Carroll gave a number of days of frank, sometimes emotional testimony, buttressed by two associates who advised jurors she reported the alleged assault to them within the moments and day afterward.
Jurors additionally heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her in opposition to her will on an airplane within the Seventies, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a author who mentioned Trump forcibly kissed her in opposition to her will whereas she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.
The six-man, three-woman jury additionally noticed the well-known 2005 “Access Hollywood” sizzling mic recording of Trump speaking about kissing and grabbing girls with out asking.
The Associated Press usually doesn’t title individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have finished.
Tacopina advised the jury in closing arguments Monday that Carroll’s account is simply too far fetched to be believed. He mentioned she made it as much as gasoline gross sales of a 2019 memoir through which she first publicly revealed her claims and to disparage Trump for political causes.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, cited excerpts from Trump’s October deposition and his infamous feedback on a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video through which he mentioned celebrities can seize girls between the legs with out asking.
She urged jurors to imagine her consumer.
“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan mentioned. She mentioned a lot of what he mentioned in his deposition and in public statements “actually supports our side of the case.”
“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she mentioned. “He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”
Carroll testified that she had an opportunity encounter with Trump on the Bergdorf Goodman retailer throughout the road from Trump Tower. She mentioned it was a lighthearted interplay through which they teased one another about attempting on a bit of lingerie earlier than Trump grew to become violent inside a dressing room.
Tacopina advised jurors there was no purpose to name Trump as a witness when Carroll can’t even recall when her encounter with Trump occurred.
He advised the jury Carroll made up her claims after listening to a couple of 2012 “Law and Order” episode through which a girl is raped within the dressing room of the lingerie part of a Bergdorf Goodman retailer.
“They modeled their secret scheme on an episode of one of the most popular shows on television,” he mentioned of Carroll.
Two of Carroll’s associates testified that she advised them concerning the encounter with Trump shortly after it occurred, a few years earlier than the “Law and Order” episode aired.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”