Trump lawyers to ask appeals court to toss judgment in E. Jean Carroll case
CBSN
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump will appear before a federal appeals panel on Friday to argue that a $5 million judgment finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll was "unjust" and should be thrown out.
The case is one of two in which unanimous federal juries awarded Carroll a total of more than $88 million.
In the May 2023 trial, jurors heard evidence related Carroll's allegation that in the mid-1990s, Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room and defamed her after she went public with the story in 2019.
More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.