A jury in New York on Friday ordered former US president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump to pay US$83.3 million to compensate writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found to have sexually assaulted and defamed.
The civil order, which prompted an audible gasp in the federal court, far exceeds the more than US$10 million in damages for defamation that Carroll had sought.
Trump lashed out almost immediately, calling the verdict “ridiculous” in a statement and promising to appeal.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The jury reached its decision after slightly less than three hours of deliberations.
Trump had been in court earlier, storming out at one point, but subsequently returning for closing arguments. He was not in court when the level of compensatory and punitive damages were read out by a court clerk.
“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Carroll said in a statement.
A juror exchanged a smile with Carroll as the nine men and women left the courtroom after the judge encouraged them to protect their privacy.
“It’s clear to me ... you paid attention,” Judge Lewis Kaplan told the jury following the verdict.
The order was comprised of US$65 million in punitive damages after the jury found Trump acted maliciously in his many public comments about Carroll, US$7.3 million in compensatory damages and US$11 million for a reputational repair program.
“I was not surprised [by the award] partly because his egregious misbehavior during the trial could actually have alienated the jury,” University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias said. Trump “is unlikely to prevail on appeal, because the [appeal] judges have great respect for Judge Kaplan, who is a very experienced federal jurist.”
Trump — whom a jury found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a separate federal civil case in New York — used his Truth Social platform to fire off a spate of insulting messages attacking Carroll, the trial and the judge, whom he called “an extremely abusive individual.”
“We were stripped of every defense — every single defense — before we walked in there,” Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said outside the court. “I am proud to stand with president Trump... We will immediately appeal.”
Trump, 77, briefly took the stand on Thursday to deny he instructed anyone to harm Carroll with his statements.
During Trump’s testimony, Kaplan limited him to three questions from his lawyers, to which he could only answer “yes” or “no” — a precaution taken to prevent the Republican leader from returning to his custom of disparaging the court or Carroll in public.
“This is not America,” Trump said as he left the courtroom following his short appearance.
Trump has used the case, as well as others he faces, to generate heated media coverage and to fuel his claims of being victimized as he campaigns for a return to the White House in November’s election.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS