A New York appeals court today upheld the $83.3 million damages award that former U.S. President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation, after she accused him of rape in 2019 and the court found him liable.
Trump had sought to overturn the ruling that previously ordered him to pay the amount, but a unanimous decision by three judges from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Manhattan, today served to confirm it.
“He has not identified any grounds that justify reconsidering our prior decision on presidential immunity,” the judges ruled, after Trump had argued that the verdict against him was excessive and unfounded following the Supreme Court’s expansion of his presidential immunity.
The judges also ruled that the lower federal court “did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.”
This defamation lawsuit against the former U.S. president came after he repeatedly attacked the journalist through various channels due to her sexual abuse allegations against him.
Trump used public appearances, social media, and even the trial where he was found liable to lash out at Carroll, to the point that her lawyers urged the jury to impose a substantial award to stop him.
A significant portion of the verdict ($65 million) consisted of punitive damages after the jury determined that Trump had acted with actual malice—that is, knowing his statements were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
The remaining amount, up to $83.3 million, was for compensatory damages to Carroll.
Another three-judge panel from the Second Circuit unanimously upheld the sexual abuse verdict in late December, a separate case from the defamation lawsuit that Carroll won against the Republican magnate in 2023.
In that case, the jury awarded her $5 million in damages after finding him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman luxury store dressing room in New York in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in statements he made after leaving the Oval Office in 2022.
Image: Opinion
