NEW YORK — A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.
The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, finding Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. The judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years.
She nodded as the verdict was announced in a New York City federal courtroom only three hours after deliberations had begun, then hugged supporters and smiled through tears. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll could be heard laughing and crying.
Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll over her allegations. Trump did not attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
Trump immediately lashed out on his social media site, claiming that he does not know Carroll and referring to the verdict as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.” He promised to appeal.
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook hands with Carroll and hugged her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, after the verdict was announced. Outside the courthouse, he told reporters the jury’s rejection of the rape claim while finding Trump responsible for sexual abuse was “perplexing” and “strange.”
“Part of me was obviously very happy that Donald Trump was not branded a rapist,” he said.
He defended Trump’s absence, citing the trial’s “circus atmosphere.” He said having Trump there “would be more of a circus.”
Tacopina added: “What more can you say other than ‘I didn’t do it’?”
In a written statement, Kaplan said the verdict proved nobody is above the law.
Carroll, in her own statement, said she sued Trump to “clear my name and to get my life back. Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
It was unclear what, if any, implications the verdict would have on Trump’s third presidential bid. He’s in a commanding position among GOP contenders and has faced few political consequences in the wake of previous controversies, ranging from the vulgar “Access Hollywood” tape to his New York criminal indictment.
His GOP rivals were mostly silent after the verdict, a sign of their reluctance to cross Trump supporters who are critical to winning the presidential nomination. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of the few vocal Trump critics in the race, said the verdict was “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”
Carroll was one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.
Trump, 76, denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at the store and did not know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.
Carroll, 79, sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.
The trial revisited the lightning-rod topic of Trump’s conduct toward women.
Carroll gave multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional testimony, buttressed by two friends who testified that she reported the alleged attack to them soon afterward.
Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.
