Eight times more than ordered. Donald Trump was sentenced this Friday by a federal jury to pay $83.3 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll, who accused the former president of the United States of destroying her reputation as a journalist by denying that he raped her mid-year ago. from the nineties in a dressing room of a luxury department store in Manhattan.
Carroll, 80, sued Trump in November 2019 for denying five months earlier that he had raped her. The favorite Republican candidate for the presidential nomination was already convicted last May of sexually abusing the woman. The jury then imposed a penalty of five million dollars.
In a post on his social network, Truth Social, the Republican attacked the ruling and assured that it will be appealed. With his usual capital letters and exclamations, the re-election candidate wrote: “Absolutely ridiculous! I strongly disagree with both verdicts, and will appeal this entire Witch Hunt led by [el presidente demócrata Joe] Biden and focused on me and the Republican Party. Our legal system is out of control and is being used as a political weapon. They have taken away all of our First Amendment rights. THIS IS NOT THE UNITED STATES.” The first amendment to the US Constitution enshrines freedom of expression.
Trump, who appeared in court Thursday and Friday, unexpectedly left the courtroom today as Carroll's lead attorney read her closing arguments. Admonished on several occasions by the judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, the sanguine former president showed a more temperate and moderate attitude during the two hearings, shattered by the angry tone of his complaint in Truth Social. In all the processes he faces, the mantra most repeated by the magnate is that of being the victim of a political witch hunt by his Democratic enemies. Victimhood has given him good results, both in popularity and in campaign fundraising: after each accusation – and there are four -, voting intention polls skyrocket and the campaign's cash register cannot cope with collecting handouts. Only in the first indictment by the Manhattan prosecutor's office, last April, for the so-called Stormy Daniels case (the payment of black money to silence an extramarital relationship with the porn actress), did the Trump campaign raise
In the second round of this civil case, which has been settled in federal court in Manhattan, the nine-member jury had to put a figure on the Republican's repeated defamation of Carroll's accusations. The prosecution had requested ten million dollars, a figure that a lawyer specialized in damages raised slightly to 12. The jury's decision has surprised everyone and everyone due to the high amount of the compensation, which is broken down into several chapters. Trump must pay Carroll compensatory damages of $18.3 million: $11 million to fund a campaign to repair his reputation and $7.3 million for the emotional damage caused by public statements Trump made in 2019, shortly after that the woman accused him of raping her in the dressing room, according to Trump to better publicize the sale of an autobiographical book.
Trump should also pay $65 million in punitive damages for acting maliciously in making the statements about Carroll, the jury has determined, the identity of whose members has been completely safeguarded, to the extent that none of them know the real truth of his actions. companions. The judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, thanked his members for their work after reading the verdict, while lifting the gag order on the deliberations, on condition of not revealing the identity of his colleagues. “My advice, however, is that they never reveal that they have been part of the jury, I am not going to say anything more about the matter,” Kaplan said, quoted by CNN. The day before, an old friend of Carroll who testified at the request of the defense highlighted the climate of political tension in the country as an aggravating circumstance of her testimony.
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Last May, a separate federal jury in Manhattan awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages – of which three million were for defamation – after it was proven that Trump sexually abused Carroll and then defamed her in 2022, disparaging her until the extreme of calling her “mentally ill” and again denying the accusations.
The candidate for re-election in November faces a complicated judicial panorama. In addition to the four charges against him, there are two civil trials, both in New York, this one for defamation and another for fraud in his family businesses, with a total of 91 charges. The judicial front has not, however, diminished his political expectations, as demonstrated by his recent consecutive victories in the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses.
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