Donald Trump Liable in E. Jean Carroll Lawsuit, Cleared of Rape

A Manhattan federal court jury Tuesday afternoon found former President Donald Trump sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of a luxury department store in Manhattan in the 1990s. 

The panel also found Trump defamed Carroll in a statement years after the 1996 assault — but cleared him of a rape allegation in the suit filed in 2019.

The panel of six men and three women awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages.

The anonymous jurors had to determine it was more probable than not that sexual abuse had occurred to find Trump liable — a standard of proof in civil trials known as the "preponderance of the evidence."

In her 2019 lawsuit, Carroll alleged Trump raped her in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman department store after the two ran into each other in a chance encounter at the shop in 1996. 

Carroll alleged Trump pinned her to the wall with his shoulder during the sexual assault that lasted a few minutes. 

In her testimony at the trial, the 79-year-old former Elle Magazine columnist told jurors that she was compelled to speak out against the former president in an effort to repair her reputation after he claimed the assault never happened. 

​​“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back,” she said on the witness stand. 

Two other Trump accusers, journalist Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, also testified during the trial about how Trump had allegedly forcibly kissed and touched them in separate encounters. 

Jurors also heard the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump, speaking on a hot mic, bragged about groping women and told a television host that celebrities can do so without consequence. 

Trump’s behavior amounted to a “modus operandi” of his unwanted sexual encounters with women, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney, Robbie Kaplan, told jurors in her closing argument Monday. 

The former president would approach women in semi-public places and then “lung” at them, Kaplan told jurors. He would then lash out at women if they spoke up about the abuse, she said. 

“Donald Trump has an MO,” Kaplan told jurors. “If the woman later speaks up, he lies about it. He demeans her. He insults her,” she said. 

Trump, who is running for president for a third time, has fervently denied Carroll’s allegations since they were first published in New York Magazine in 2019. 

Throughout the trial Trump attorney Joe Tacopina sought to undermine Carroll’s claims – and argued in his closing statement that she had concocted the story in an effort to sell books. 

“This is an absolutely outrageous case,” Tacopina told the panel. 

Carroll “abused this system by bringing a false claim for amongst other things money,” he added.