Jurors in the civil lawsuit deliberated for less than three hours before finding that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The nine-member panel also found that Trump had defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presided over the Carroll trial, “has been overturned once already in Carroll v. Trump,” Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina said Thursday, referring to a 2020 appellate ruling that undid a decision excluding the Justice Department from representing Trump as a government employee — a still unresolved issue.
“I am sure it will be twice after this appeal is heard,” Tacopina added.
An appeal is typically considered a long shot, however. In this trial, there were 11 witnesses who testified in support of a verdict in Carroll’s favor, while Trump did not present any witnesses in his own defense (he is not required to do so).
Chris Mattei, a lawyer who won a major defamation case against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on behalf of the families of Sandy Hook Elementary school victims, said the Carroll jury’s liability finding will probably be hard to challenge.
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