A federal appeals court has upheld a $5 million verdict against Donald Trump for sexually abusing and defaming magazine writer E Jean Carroll, marking a legal setback for the president-elect, The Guardian reported.
The three-judge panel at the second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan rejected Trump’s appeal for a new trial.
They ruled that evidence, including testimonies from other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct and the infamous Access Hollywood tape, was properly admitted in court.
The tape famously recorded Trump boasting about grabbing women.
The verdict, handed down in May 2023, found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, before he became president. However, the jury did not label the incident as rape.
The $5m included $2.02m for sexual assault and $2.98m for defamation related to Trump’s 2022 social media post, where he dismissed Carroll’s accusations as a “hoax”.
The appeals court found that testimonies from two other women, businesswoman Jessica Leeds and former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, were crucial in establishing a pattern of behaviour consistent with Carroll’s allegations.
“Mr. Trump’s statements in the Access Hollywood tape, together with the testimony of Ms Leeds and Ms Stoynoff, establish a repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct consistent with what Ms Carroll alleged,” the court said, according to The Guardian.
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