Former US President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $83 million in compensation to author E. Jean Carroll in a defamation lawsuit.
Trump Ordered to Pay $83 Million in Compensation
For the second time, author E. Jean Carroll has won a lawsuit against Trump. The former US president has been ordered to pay millions in compensation. In the first trial, he had already been convicted of sexual assault.
Former US President Donald Trump has been ordered to make another compensation payment of $83.3 million – about 77 million euros – in a second defamation trial in New York. This was the second civil trial of 80-year-old American author E. Jean Carroll against the 77-year-old.
Carroll accused Trump of ruining her reputation by calling her a liar. The defense of the former columnist had demanded $24 million in damages. The awarded amount significantly exceeds this claim.
First Conviction in May 2023
The verdict in the first civil trial was already issued last May. At that time, a jury convicted Trump of sexually assaulting Carroll and causing bodily harm. The then 79-year-old had accused Trump of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in New York in 1996.
The rape accusation was rejected by the jury. However, the members of the jury already found it proven in the first trial that Trump was guilty of defamation. Carroll was awarded five million dollars in damages in the first trial.
Trump has always denied the allegations. He insists that he never assaulted Carroll and didn’t even know her. Trump has also claimed several times that the author was “not my type” anyway and that she lied about the alleged incident in order to promote her 2019 memoir.
Defamatory Comments Against Author
Even before the start of the second trial, Judge Lewis Kaplan had also ruled that Trump’s subsequent comments were defamatory. So, the jury only had to decide on the amount of compensation that Trump must pay now.
Unlike in the first trial, Trump appeared multiple times in person in the second trial and made numerous disruptive and commentative statements, prompting the judge to threaten him with dismissal. Among other things, Trump criticized the second trial against him as a “witch hunt” and “fraud”.
Trump is considered the most promising candidate of the Republicans for the upcoming presidential elections in November. However, he is currently dealing with numerous court cases. Trump frequently uses court appointments as a kind of campaign event.