Trump attends New York court hearing to appeal verdict in Carroll sex abuse case

Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll are squaring off Friday in lower Manhattan as the former president tries to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the one-time columnist.

Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll are squaring off Friday in lower Manhattan as the former president tries to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the one-time columnist. A nine-member jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages following a two-week trial last year. Trump did not attend the trial or call any witnesses, but he was seen arriving at Friday’s oral arguments. Carroll is also expected to appear. The court will not issue a decision on Friday and one is unlikely before November’s presidential election. The court hearing brought Trump, the Republican nominee for president, back to what had become a familiar stop during the campaign — the corridors of a courthouse. Unlike the New York civil fraud trial and criminal trial related to hush money payments — where Trump spoke to cameras in the hallways claiming he was unfairly prosecuted and using the opportunity to campaign — there are no cameras inside federal court, though media will be outside tracking his motorcade. The sexual abuse and defamation trial in 2023 was the first of several cases against Trump and marked the first time he was found liable for sexually abusing a woman. Carroll testified in vivid detail that Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her in 2019 when he denied the attack, said she wasn’t his type and suggested Carroll made up the story to sell copies of a new book. The jury returned the verdict within three hours of deliberating, finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll but that she had not proven that Trump raped her. Trump does not face jail time in the case. The case is separate from a related defamation trial that was held earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll. In appealing the 2023 judgment, Trump’s attorneys have argued the trial judge made mistakes by allowing the jury to hear evidence from two other women who claimed Trump sexually assaulted them – one in the 1970s and another in 2005. They also argued that the judge should not have permitted Carroll’s attorneys to play the highly charged “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump is caught on a hot mic describing how he grabs women. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump says.