Trump cannot challenge writer’s rape claim at defamation trial, judge rules
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Last May, the jury ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $6.6 million over their alleged encounter in a dressing room.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW YORK - Former United States president Donald Trump cannot argue to a jury assessing damages at writer E. Jean Carroll’s upcoming defamation trial that he did not rape her in the mid-1990s, based on another jury having found that he only sexually abused her, a US judge has ruled.
In an order on the night of Jan 6, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan granted Ms Carroll’s request to block the defence from arguing that the jury reached its conclusion because it did not believe Ms Carroll’s rape claim.
Last May, the jury ordered Trump to pay Ms Carroll US$5 million (S$6.6 million) over their alleged encounter in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room, which Trump says never happened, and for defaming her in 2022.
In the scheduled Jan 16 trial, a different jury will consider how much Trump should pay Ms Carroll, 80, for defaming her in 2019, when he was still president and the former Elle magazine columnist discussed the encounter in her memoir.
Trump’s lawyers said the first jury’s finding undermined Ms Carroll’s claim that he acted with malice by maintaining that he did not know Ms Carroll and that she concocted the rape claim to sell her book.
But the judge said the jury’s finding that Trump forcibly and without consent penetrated Ms Carroll’s vagina made her rape claim “substantially true under common modern parlance”, even if it did not fit the definition of rape under New York law.
Judge Kaplan said it would waste time for jurors at the upcoming trial to consider how Trump penetrated Carroll, when the only issue is damages for defamation.
Trump’s lawyers and a spokeswoman did not immediately respond on Jan 8 to requests for comment.
Ms Carroll is seeking US$10 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages. She is expected to testify, and Trump is a possible trial witness.
Trump is the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
He has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal charges in four indictments, including two cases claiming that he tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. REUTERS
