Trump found liable for sexual battery, defamation

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A federal judge threatened to bounce former President Donald Trump from the courtroom Wednesday after a lawyer for E. Jean Carroll said he repeatedly made comments within earshot of the jury at his latest civil defamation trial.

"Mr. Trump, I hope I don't have to consider excluding you from the trial,” Judge Lewis Kaplan told the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner after Carroll's lawyer complained that the jury could hear him disparaging the former advice columnist's testimony. “I understand you're probably eager for me to do that.”

“I would love it,” Trump growled from the defense table.

“You just can't control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Judge Kaplan said.

On Wednesday, Carroll told the jury that Trump's attacks in June 2019, after she first went public with her allegations, led to an avalanche of abuse and threats. She said she physically ducked after reading the first emailed death threat. "I thought I was gonna get shot," Carroll said.

Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) led her through some of the threats she had received. One said the "penalty for lying about rape should be execution by hanging or firing squad," while another said "stick a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger and send yourself to HELL."

"I spent 50 years building a reputation," Carroll said. "Now I'm known as a liar, a fraud, and a whack job."

A lawyer for Carroll complained to the judge at a morning break from testimony and again during a lunch break that she could hear Trump making statements that shouldn't be heard by the jury. The attorney, Shawn Crowley, said she overheard Trump say "It is a witch hunt" and "It really is a con job." Some of the jurors, Crowley added, were sitting closer to Trump than she was.

Carroll's team began the morning by calling Carroll herself to the stand, as they make their case that Trump ruined her reputation and caused her to live in fear through his denials of sexually assaulting her.

The ongoing attacks could come back to haunt him. Crowley raised them during opening statements Tuesday, saying there were 22 just that day as of her team's last count and jurors should think about how much money it will take to make the "self-proclaimed billionaire" stop.

"It's time to show him no one is above the law," Crowley said.

Trump's team, for their part, characterized Carroll as an attention-seeker who herself is to blame for the negative attention and threats she's received.

"She wants President Trump to pay for the risks she took," Trump lawyer Alina Habba told the jurors Tuesday. "Her career has prospered and she has been thrust back into the limelight like she always wanted."

Carroll testified that she may have deleted threatening messages after the lawsuit began, saying she "didn't know how to handle death threats" and wanted them out of her mind. Habba pointed to it as grounds for a mistrial. "The witness just admitted to deleting emails," Habba said.

Judge Kaplan swiftly denied the request.

It was one of a series of tense exchanges between Habba and the judge. Habba opened the day by asking once again for scheduled proceedings on Thursday to be cancelled in light of funeral arrangements for Melania Trump's mother, even though Judge Kaplan has repeatedly denied that request in recent days.

Judge Kaplan instructed Habba to "please sit down" and she retorted that she didn't like how he was speaking to her. "I'm asking for an adjournment," she said. "It's denied, sit down," he replied.

Judge Kaplan also reproached Habba several times for attempting to introduce evidence improperly and trying to make statements about different laws in front of the jury, such as license requirements for the gun Carroll testified she inherited and keeps near her bed.

It could cost as much as $12.1 million to repair the harm to the writer E. Jean Carroll's reputation caused by a pair of defamatory statements former President Donald Trump made in 2019, a professor told a federal jury in New York on Thursday.

Thursday's testimony by Northwestern University professor Ashlee Humphreys sought to quantify how many people saw and believed two statements Trump made denying he sexually assaulted, or had ever even met, Carroll. The judge overseeing Carroll's suit against Trump has already determined the statements were defamatory, and the jury is tasked with determining what damages she should be awarded. A separate jury last year found Trump liable for sexual abuse and another defamatory statement.

Trump attended the first two days of the damages trial, but was not in the courtroom Thursday as Humphreys described how she quantified the harm done to Carroll. The former president was in Florida, attending his mother-in-law's funeral.

Humphreys said she calculated the harm to Carroll's reputation by analyzing articles, tweets and TV broadcasts referencing both of Trump's defamatory statements. She then determined how many people had seen the stories or segments on the same day they appeared. She concluded the damage to Carroll's reputation as a journalist was "severe."

She said there were as many as 104,132,285 impressions on those pieces on just the first day each was aired or published. As many as 24,788,657 viewers likely believed the claims, she said.

Earlier Thursday, Carroll completed more than a day of testimony in the case. Under cross-examination, Trump attorney Alina Habba pointed out that there were celebrities who lauded Carroll after her trial victory over Trump in May 2023, when a jury awarded her $5 million. Habba asked Carroll if she's more well-known now than before she first made her allegations.

"Yes, I'm more well-known, and I'm hated by a lot more people," Carroll said.

Habba also displayed negative tweets that users posted during the five-hour period in 2019 between her allegations becoming public and Trump first commenting.

Under questioning by her own attorney, Roberta Kaplan, Carroll said that during that window she was the subject of mean tweets, but did not receive rape or death threats, and was not accused of being a Democratic operative working against Trump.

Kaplan also played a brief video clip of Trump repeating his denial of Carroll's claims during a speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday. Throughout the trial, Kaplan and other attorneys for Carroll have pointed to ongoing allegedly defamatory statements said by Trump, including in recent days, and indicated they want the jury to award more than just an amount needed to fix Carroll's reputation.

They've said they want the jury to decide "how much money he should pay to get him to stop doing it."

Former President Trump took the stand in his defamation case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll on Thursday for about two minutes in a brief, fiery moment that marked the final testimony before closing arguments.

Trump in the courtroom said nearly as much off the stand as he did while testifying.

“This is not America, not America, this is not America,” Trump said as he was exiting the courtroom, although the jury had already left at that point.

Trump’s testimony set up a critical moment in the case as he sought to stave off Carroll’s request for at least $10 million in damages for Trump’s denials that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

In the morning, Trump had appeared rather subdued in the courtroom, yawning at times and whispering to his lawyers.

But after lunch, when the trial moved to the issue of Trump’s testimony, the former president sat up straight as U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, went back and forth with the lawyers.

For years, Trump has publicly attacked Carroll’s credibility and appearance in the court of public opinion, including recently at campaign rallies and in spates of Truth Social posts.

But Kaplan had placed strict limits on what Trump could testify about in the courtroom, given that the trial is only being held on the narrow issue of damages.

As the judge went back and forth about the ground rules with Alina Habba, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, Trump repeatedly interrupted his lawyer.

“I never met the woman,” Trump told Habba.

She clenched her microphone, which had amplified the audio. The jury was not yet in the room.

After Kaplan told the former president to keep his voice down, he continued to try to talk to Habba.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Trump, you’re interrupting the proceedings,” Kaplan then admonished the former president.

After the jury entered, Habba called Trump as a witness and he was sworn in. Habba asked him whether he stood by his deposition, which the jury heard hours earlier, in which Trump again denied the assault.

“100 percent, yes,” Trump responded.

Habba also asked her client if he had instructed anyone to cause harm to Carroll.

“No, I just wanted to defend myself, my family,” Trump said.

Carroll’s lawyers’ cross-examination of Trump similarly took mere seconds. Trump shook his head from side to side at one point in between questions.

Speculation had run rampant about whether Trump would actually take the stand.

After Trump finished testifying, his lawyers rested their case. Closing arguments are set for Friday morning.

Donald Trump's defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll could drive him to bankruptcy, attorneys have told Newsweek, particularly when combined with potential damages from his civil fraud trial.

A second defamation trial brought against the former president and GOP frontrunner by Carroll started last week. In May 2023, the journalist was awarded $5 million in damages after a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the former Elle columnist. The former president has denied sexually assaulting Carroll at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the 1990s.

As the trial continues, a number of legal experts said that the former president might risk bankruptcy if he is forced to pay high damages. It comes after Rudy Giuliani, a former Trump lawyer, declared bankruptcy in December after being ordered to pay $148 million for defamation.

How Much Will Donald Trump Have To Pay?
Former Department of Justice litigator Gene Rossi indicated Trump might have to pay "tens of millions of dollars" in damages.

He said: "The damages from this jury trial could be profound. A jury is not going to tolerate repeated defamatory behavior. If a large money judgment is entered to stop him, the Herculean task for Ms. Carroll will be collection. Her efforts to get even a nickel from Mr. Trump could indeed force him into bankruptcy."

He added: "If the jury is appalled by the conduct of Mr. Trump and is turned off by the arguable antics of his lawyers, then the judgment could be tens of millions of dollars."

Matthew Mangino, a former district attorney in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, said the judgement could be "as high as nine figures." "Donald Trump already lost—the compensatory and punitive damages could be enormous," he said. "Yet, Trump doesn't seem to care."

He added: "I'm sure his assets are neatly tied up, bankruptcy is a mere business decision. Trump has all his marbles in winning back the presidency whatever the cost. His outward contempt for the court and the process is very dangerous.

"I would guess, and juries are impossible to predictable, that the punitive award could be as high as nine figures."

Trump's net worth has not been publicly disclosed. But according to Forbes estimates, it is around $2.6 billion.

However, as well as the Carroll case, the Republican is facing a civil fraud trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. In September, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a partial summary judgment ruling that Trump and top executives at The Trump Organization committed fraud. He held that the former president grossly inflated the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers. The rest of the trial will determine how much the Republican will pay in damages, as well as rule on six other accusations—including falsifying business records, insurance fraud and conspiracy claims.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an associate professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, agreed that a combination of this case and the Carroll case could trigger bankruptcy.

"Only Trump knows for sure what his finances actually are," she told Newsweek.

"But the combination of the New York civil fraud case and the E. Jean Carroll cases could be a one-two punch that triggers a bankruptcy. However, I doubt ex-President Trump would want to file for bankruptcy during an election year."

She said that a bankruptcy filing from Trump would reveal his debts and creditors. "I suspect Trump would want to hide those facts from voters," she said.

She added that the damages may be higher than the $148 million Giuliani was ordered to pay after a ruling he defamed Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.

"This could be even higher damage award because this case involved Trump as president when his defamation could reach a maximum possible audience that was even bigger than Giuliani's audience," Torres-Spelliscy said.

However, attorney Bradley Moss said that, while the issue was outside his area of expertise, he doubted the case would bankrupt Trump because of his assets.

"I do not expect this to bankrupt him," he said. "He isn't Rudy. He does have actual assets."

Why Donald Trump Could Choose Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a choice that Trump might choose to avoid paying his debts, rather than because he will go bust.

The move puts a freeze on attempts by creditors to collect on a debt and therefore would buy time for Trump to develop a repayment plan.

Some debts in bankruptcy can be discharged, meaning the person is not obligated to make payments on them.

However, filing for bankruptcy can impair a person's credit rating, making it hard for them to get a loan or buy property later.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who wrote the 2016 biography “The Making Of Donald Trump,” suggested why the former president is “doubling, tripling, quintupling down” on attacking his accuser E. Jean Carroll.

“I think he’s hoping the jury awards far more than $10 million because then he can go out and say, ‘See, it’s further evidence the system is against you,’” Johnston told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday’s broadcast of “The ReidOut.”

Trump will be able to complain that “it’s a New York jury, which of course is code for, they’re not Christian and they’re not white,” Johnston explained. “And that will appeal to his base, but it won’t broaden his support, which is what he needs.”

Johnston argued Trump “doesn’t expect to ever pay this, just as he doesn’t believe he’ll ever go to jail.”

But it “doesn’t mean that in his jumbled mind he’s also not terrified,” Johnston said. “He is. But I think his goal here is get an enormous award from this jury so that he can use it to stir up his base.”

The award included $11 million for damage to Carroll's reputation, $7.3 million for emotional harm and other damages, and $65 million in punitive damages.

The decision came after contentious closing arguments that saw Trump storm out of the courtroom. He returned for his own attorney's closing arguments but left the courthouse at 4 p.m., before the jury returned its verdict.

He posted about it on his social media platform on Truth Social a short time later. "Absolutely ridiculous!" he wrote, adding he would be appealing. "They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!"

Carroll did not comment as she left the courthouse.

Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan asked the jury for at least $24 million in compensatory damages for the harm she suffered and “lots and lots of money” in punitive damages to stop him from continuing to defame her.

Trump, she said, "thinks the rules don’t apply to him." "He thinks with his wealth and power he can treat Ms. Carroll how he wants and will suffer no consequences," she said, noting the number of times he's continued slamming Carroll publicly since he was first found liable for defaming her last year. She urged the jury "to make him pay for what he has done to E. Jean Carroll."

On Thursday, the jury was shown several examples of Trump’s repeated shots at Carroll to reporters and on social media since the $5 million verdict was delivered in the other case last year. While the trial was a break for Covid-related reasons earlier this week, Trump posted about Carroll around three dozen times on his Truth Social website.

Trump's attorney Alina Habba maintained that Carroll “had failed to show she is entitled to any damages at all” because she "actively sought the comments and the attention" she received. She also said Trump was not to blame for the number of threats she received online after she went public. “He has as much control of social media users as he does the weather,” she said.

Habba contended an expert report used by Carroll that said it would cost $7 million to $12 million to repair her reputation had "more holes than Swiss cheese." The jury awarded Carroll $11 million on that claim.

You know, if you're old enough to remember the O. J. Simpson business 30 years ago, there are some parallels.

In the case of Simpson, the criminal process was unable to prove its case and Simpson went free. But the public more or less assumed he had done what he was accused of, and the victim's families were able to get large judgments against him.

The difference is that the public overwhelmingly believed in Simpson's guilt, whereas the same public overwhelmingly believes that Trump is being set up, so he becomes a hero whereas Simpson is the bogeyman.

Bizarre that you think that’s the public sentiment. Dude was found liable of a sex crime, then of defamation about it twice over. Obviously he did it all.

Only extreme maga cult members would believe it isn’t true.

Well it would seem they'll be most of the voters, as the polls predict Trump will win handily in November.