Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse in E. Jean Carroll case

• The jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.
• The verdict was reached in record time.
• E. Jean Carroll is awarded $5 million.

Former President Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but the jury stopped short of finding that he raped writer E. Jean Carroll in the ’90s, according to EFE.

The New York jury that heard the case reached a verdict in record time. Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in the fitting room of a New York department store in 1996.

The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation

E. Jean Carroll also accused Trump of defaming her after she went public with her accusations in a book that was published in 2019.

The jury, made up of six men and three women, reached the verdict after a little more than two and a half hours of deliberations, according CNN.

Videos of Trump’s deposition were shown during the trial

Donald Trump must be held accountable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll 1996 because even former presidents are not above the law, a lawyer for the columnist said Monday in his closing arguments.

A Trump attorney responded by saying the accuser’s account is not credible and that no one is below the law either. Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer for columnist E. Jean Carroll, showed the jury videos of Trump’s October deposition and played the 2005 Access Hollywood clip of Trump, who, unaware that his microphone was on, said that stars can «do anything» to women without permission, according to the AP

“This is how he thinks. And this is how he acts”

Kaplan recalled that Trump admitted there that «stars like him can sexually assault women with impunity.» “This is Donald Trump. That’s how he thinks. And that’s how he acts,» Kaplan said. «He believes that he can go unpunished.»

Kaplan used Trump’s own words to substantiate Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a fitting room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in 1996. Joe Tacopina, Trump’s attorney, attacked the allegations as absurd, saying they are «an affront to justice» and minimize «the real victims of rape.»

The closing arguments

He agreed with Kaplan that no one is above the law, but warned that «no one is below it either.» Tacopina told jurors that they do not have to «let her win millions of dollars» because «they will have no doubt about how this story, this fraudulent lawsuit, was concocted.»

Tacopina repeatedly called Carroll’s allegations «impossible to believe,» saying she made them up just for status and political reasons. She added that Carroll herself had testified that it had been «an astonishing coincidence» that an episode of a Law and Order spinoff, broadcast in 2012, dealt with the rape of a woman in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room.