The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a $5 million
verdict in favour of E Jean Carroll in a case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the former magazine columnist and then defaming her.
The justices turned away Trump’s appeal on Monday after a lower court upheld the 2023 jury verdict and rejected Trump’s arguments that the trial was unfair because the judge impermissibly let jurors hear evidence of his alleged past sexual misconduct.
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Trump has been battling Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, ever since she published an excerpt from her memoir in 2019 in which she alleged that Trump had raped her in 1996 in a department store dressing room in Manhattan.
The case that led to the $5 million verdict concerned Trump’s statements in 2022 when he called Carroll’s claim a “hoax” and a “con job” in a post on social media.
“This woman is not my type!” Trump added in the post.
Carroll sued Trump in federal court in Manhattan. Jurors in 2023 decided that Trump had sexually abused Carroll and defamed her, awarding $5 million in damages.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that allegations leading to the verdict were propped up by “highly inflammatory” evidentiary rulings, including those that allowed the testimony of two other women who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago.
The Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in 2024, ruling that evidence established a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Carroll’s allegations.
Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the trial judge “erroneously allowed testimony about multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations to be presented to the jury,” flouting federal rules governing the admission of evidence in a case.
Carroll’s lawyers had urged the justices to pass on the case. They argued that the other women’s testimonies were relevant because the allegations were similar and that Judge Lewis Kaplan’s decisions were in line with those of other judges around the country.
The Supreme Court decision comes as it hands down opinions in the biggest cases of the term, many key to Trump’s agenda.
A jury also awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million after a second trial for defamation when Trump first denied her claims in 2019. Trump is also appealing that ruling, though it is not yet before the Supreme Court.
<small>Source: Al Jazeera</small>
