A jury in New York has found that former President Donald Trump committed sexual battery against journalist E. Jean Carroll, and that his claims last fall that she had made up the story constituted defamation.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
The verdict in the trial involving allegations from Carroll that she had been raped by Trump in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s came after a scant two and a half hours of deliberations on Tuesday.
Trump didn’t testify in his own defense in the trial, leaving his attorney, Joseph Tacopina, to base the defense strategy around cross-examinations of Carroll and the plaintiff’s other witnesses.
Trump at this writing has yet to comment on the verdict.
It’s the first significant legal setback for the former president, who is facing a $250 million civil fraud suit in New York, and is expected to face criminal charges in Georgia related to an investigation of his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Despite the many legal swords of Damocles hanging over his head, Trump somehow leads the 2024 Republican presidential nomination field against a group of contenders led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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Chris Graham
