A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $83.3 million jury award against President Trump for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019, after she accused him of a decades-old rape in a Manhattan department store — an attack for which he was separately found liable for sexual abuse.
The court also rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s decision last year affording presidential immunity for official acts barred a finding of liability in Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit.
The unsigned ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan was unanimous.
The president had assailed Ms. Carroll after she accused him of the assault, continuing his verbal attacks on her on social media, at news conferences and even during the trial, during which Ms. Carroll’s lawyers had urged the jury to impose a large award in order to stop him.
A large portion of the verdict — $65 million — consisted of punitive damages after the jury found Mr. Trump had acted with malice.
In December, a different three-judge panel of the Second Circuit unanimously upheld a separate civil verdict Ms. Carroll won against Mr. Trump in 2023. In that case, a jury awarded her $5 million in damages after finding him liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and defaming her in statements he made in 2022, after he was out of office.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he intends to ask the Supreme Court to review the jury’s $5 million verdict and liability finding.
On Monday, Aaron Harison, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team, said in a statement that the American people stand with Mr. Trump and demand “an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system.”
The statement did not say whether Mr. Trump would seek review of the panel’s ruling on Monday to the full Second Circuit appeals court or the Supreme Court.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that “we look forward to an end to the appellate process so that justice will finally be done.”
Ms. Carroll has not yet received any damages that juries have said Mr. Trump owes her. Last year, Mr. Trump posted a $91.6 million bond in the defamation case that was affirmed on Monday. (The amount is higher than the jury’s award, because Mr. Trump is also responsible for interest.)
Mr. Trump has also posted about $5.6 million in cash in a court account pending the outcome of his appeal of the $5 million a jury said Ms. Carroll was owed in the other trial.
Ms. Carroll testified in Manhattan federal court in 2023 that she ran into Mr. Trump at Bergdorf’s in the mid-1990s, where he asked her for help buying a present for a female friend. They were in the lingerie department when Mr. Trump forced Ms. Carroll into a dressing room and shoved her against a wall, Ms. Carroll told the jury. He then pulled down her tights and inserted his finger and then his penis into her vagina, she testified.
Although Ms. Carroll had accused Mr. Trump of rape, the jury in May 2023 found that he had sexually abused her but did not find that he had raped her.
Monday’s unsigned 70-page ruling was issued by Judges Denny Chin, Sarah A. L. Merriam and Maria Araújo Kahn. Judge Chin was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama; Judges Merriam and Kahn were appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
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