Former President Donald Trump on Thursday appealed a Manhattan jury’s verdict in a civil case that he sexually abused and defamed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Trump’s appeal was the latest update in a legal clash between Trump, 76, and Carroll, 79, who accuses Trump of having raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996.
It came two days after a jury in a Manhattan federal court found that Trump did not rape Carroll but instead sexually abused her—committing a battery offense—and, in his denial of the incident, committed libel, a type of defamation in written words. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
Because the case was brought in civil court, Carroll was required to establish her battery claim by “a preponderance of the evidence”—a legal standard meaning more likely than not—and establish “clear and convincing evidence” for her libel claim. Both standards here are lower than the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement to establish a guilty verdict in criminal cases.
After the court announced the verdict on Tuesday, Trump’s attorney Joseph Tacopina told The Epoch Times that Trump plans to appeal the case. Court records showed on Thursday that Trump notified the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that he was appealing the verdict.
“Strange verdict,” Tacopina told reporters outside the courthouse on Thursday. “It was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that.”
Carroll, a former columnist at Elle magazine, said that she felt “fantastic” after the verdict in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday.
Trump, on the other hand, protested the verdict. He has, to today, denied all of Carroll’s allegations.
“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace—a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the verdict came out on Tuesday.
During a Wednesday town hall hosted by CNN, the former president said that Carroll’s story is “made-up” and called his accuser a “whack job.”
In response to those comments, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told The New York Times in an interview on Thursday that Carroll is weighing launching another lawsuit against Trump.
By Gary Bai
