GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump was back in a New York courtroom Friday, appearing before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge a civil jury’s findings that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll and demand a new trial.
The Republican nominee, who was not required to attend, ambled into the 17th-floor courtroom at the Thurgood Marshall federal courthouse by Foley Square at around 9:55 a.m. Trump and Carroll, who declined to comment after the hearing, did not look at one another as he walked past her or during the arguments that lasted less than 30 minutes.
Following the proceeding, Trump headed to midtown for a planned press conference at Trump Tower.
Following a two-week trial — which the former president did not attend nor call any witnesses at — a Manhattan jury on May 9, 2023, found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Midtown changing room in the mid-1990s and defaming her on Truth Social after his presidency, awarding her $5 million in damages.
Trump’s appellate lawyer, John Sauer, argued that Carroll’s case was “a textbook example of implausible allegations” propped up by “inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, including allegations levied by witnesses for Carroll, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, that Trump subjected them to unwanted sexual contact in 1979 and 2005, respectively, as well as the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about having license to molest women.
Trump’s attorney, in particular, took issue with the jury hearing Leeds’ allegations that Trump groped her on an airplane. He argued that was not a crime in 1979.
Sauer also accused Carroll of bringing the case for political reasons and alleged she was being “funded and encouraged” by Trump’s political enemies, prompting one of the judges to interrupt him to note that was not what the appeal was about.
“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, countered when she stood before the panel, prompting Trump to perk up and look toward the window suddenly.
“And then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up.”
In response to Sauer’s arguments about Leeds, Carroll’s lawyer said simple assault on an aircraft was a crime in 1979. “It was a crime then to grope someone on a plane. It is a crime now to grope someone on a plane,” Kaplan said.
Carroll’s lawyer said Leeds’ allegations resembled Carroll’s and what Stoynoff told the jury about Trump sticking his tongue down her throat during a moment they were alone together when she interviewed him and his then-new wife, Melania, at Mar-a-Lago for People magazine.
“He had a pattern of pleasant chatting with a woman and then, all of a sudden — out of nowhere — he would, for lack of a better term, pounce,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan noted that Trump didn’t make any effort to fight the evidence he complained of when the case went on trial.
“He was given every opportunity to take the stand and rebut all this evidence,” Kaplan said. “He did not present one witness.”
The appeals court panel appeared skeptical of Trump’s legal positions, with Justice Denny Chin at one point telling Sauer it was “very hard” to overturn a jury’s verdict based on a judge’s evidentiary rulings in asking him why the appeals court should give Trump a new trial.
The panel did not issue a ruling and likely will not before the presidential election on November 5.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, testified for almost three days of the spring 2023 trial, emotionally recounting the attack inside a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. She said the incident occurred after she and Trump bumped into each other by the store’s revolving doors, and he invited her to help him pick out lingerie for an unnamed girlfriend.
The writer said the situation took a dark turn when they reached an unoccupied floor in the department store by the changing rooms, when Trump closed the door and, pushed her against a wall and started kissing her without consent.
Carroll said he became increasingly violent and molested her with his hand before pulling down her tights and raping her. Jurors determined Carroll’s lawyers did not prove by a majority of the evidence that Trump raped her.
The suit filed in November 2022 was the second of two Carroll brought against Trump and among the first filed under the Adult Survivors Act, historic legislation lifting the statute of limitations to bring sex assault claims in New York for one year.
A short time after the trial, Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan found Trump liable in Carroll’s separate defamation lawsuit against Trump — brought in 2020 — which accused him of defaming her when he was president. Trump bogged that case down for years by invoking presidential immunity.
In January, a second jury that only considered damages determined Trump owed her an additional $83.3 million for defaming her as president. Trump attended that trial and spent less than three minutes on the stand, during which he wasn’t permitted to deny the assault or that he had defamed Carroll.
Carrol’s legal team has not ruled out bringing more defamation claims against Trump as he has continued to deny the assault and call her a liar.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.