Team Trump Can’t Tout E. Jean Carroll Rape Ruling at Defamation Trial, Judge Says
A New York judge has said that Donald Trump’s legal team won’t be allowed to use a civil jury’s decision last year that the former president sexually abused but didn’t rape E. Jean Carroll at another trial involving the columnist set to kick off next week, this one to determine the damages he owes her for defaming her in the wake of her accusation.
The Saturday night filing by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, first reported by the Associated Press, accedes to a request by Carroll’s lawyers that Trump’s be barred “from offering any evidence, conducting any examination, or making any argument” related to last year’s trial, in which the jury found Trump liable of sexually abusing her, but failed to agree on whether what he did matched the legal definition of “rape.”
The Jan. 16 defamation trial will see a jury weigh the amount of money Trump owes Carroll for comments he made in 2019 calling her story—that he raped her in a department store dressing room decades ago—“totally false.” Last September, Kaplan ruled that the trial would skip straight to determining damages, as the comments were “substantially the same” as the remarks at the heart of a separate defamation claim Carroll won against Trump in May.