Judges said the president defamed E. Jean Carroll.
A federal appeals court on Sept. 8 upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defamation.
“We hold that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case,” a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said in a per curiam opinion.
The panel consisted of U.S. Circuit Judges Denny Chin, Maria Araújo Kahn, and Sarah A. L. Merriam.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told The Epoch Times in an email that Trump was demanding “an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts,” including the Carroll case, “the defense of which the Attorney General has determined is legally required to be taken over by the Department of Justice” because Carroll based her claims “on the President’s official acts, including statements from the White House,” the spokeperson added.
Carroll did not return a request for comment.
A jury in 2023 found Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and defamed her in his denial of the incident.
A jury the following year awarded Carroll $83 million in damages for Trump’s defaming her with two statements he made while in office during his first term, including accusing her of suing him to generate publicity that would help sell a book she wrote.
Trump appealed the ruling. His lawyers said in a brief that presidential immunity protects him from liability for official statements. They also said that the district court judge who oversaw the cases committed errors, including taking the ruling in the first case to the other, which led to a damages-only trial, and “prevented President Trump from presenting devastating evidence.”
The appeals court panel said on Monday that Trump waived presidential immunity by not raising it in his first response to Carroll’s civil complaint. The panel also said it identified no errors with the judge’s rulings, including the striking of Trump’s testimony, “I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency.”
“Any potential error was harmless because the jury received ample other evidence of Trump’s state of mind toward Carroll, as relevant to common law malice,” the panel stated.
The ruling comes several days after Trump’s attorneys gave notice that they plan to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the sexual abuse and defamation verdict.
