“Today the world finally learned the truth,” Carroll said in a statement. “This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
The former US president, waging a campaign to retake the White House in 2024, will appeal, his lawyer Joseph Tacopina told reporters outside Manhattan federal court.
Carroll, 79, testified during a civil trial that Trump, 76, raped her in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996, then wrote a post on his Truth social platform in October 2022 to damage her reputation. Delivered. The claims were “a complete hoax”, “a hoax” and “lies”.
Trump was absent during the entire trial, which began on April 25. In a post on his Truth social platform, Trump called the verdict a “disgrace” and added, “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is.”
Because this was a civil case, Trump did not face any criminal consequences and thus, was never in danger of going to jail.
The jury, required to reach a unanimous verdict, deliberated for only three hours. Its six men and three women awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but Trump will not have to pay them while the case is on appeal.
In April, Trump gave only rough estimates of his assets required in financial disclosures to election regulators, listing more than a dozen properties as “more than $50 million.”
‘Trump supporters are not going to convert core voters’
Presidents From 2017 to 2021, Trump continues to lead in opinion polls for the Republican presidential nomination and has shown an uncanny ability to weather controversies that can sink other politicians.
In America’s polarized political climate, it is unlikely that the civil verdict will have an impact on Trump’s core supporters, who see his legal crisis as part of a concerted effort by opponents to undermine him.
“The people who are anti-Trump are going to stay that way, the core pro-Trump voters are not going to change, and I don’t think they’re going to move on from things like that.” Charlie Gero, Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.
Gero said any negative effects are likely to be small and limited to suburban women and moderate Republicans.
Trump has cited the Carroll trial in campaign fundraising emails, which he characterizes as a Democratic conspiracy. He has said that Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine and a registered Democrat, has made allegations to boost sales of his 2019 memoir and try to hurt him politically.
His polling numbers improved last month after he was accused of falsifying business records in connection with secretly paying a porn star prior to his victory in the 2016 presidential election.
The first US president past or present to be criminally charged, Trump pleaded not guilty and said the charges were politically motivated.
Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, said it remained to be seen whether the decision in Carroll’s case would make Trump “unfavorable” to Republican voters beyond his base, prompting them to align with another candidate.
The trial featured testimony from former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, who told jurors that Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2005 and forcibly kissed her for “a few minutes”. Another woman, Jessica Leeds, testified that Trump kissed her, groped her and put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.
Jurors also heard excerpts from a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump says women let him “grab the pussy.”
“Historically, that’s been true with the stars … if you look back over the last million years,” Trump said in October 2022 in a video statement played in court. He has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual misconduct.
Trump understood Carroll as ex-wife
Carroll testified that she had bumped into Trump at Bergdorf’s and agreed to help him pick out a gift for another woman. He testified that the two looked at her lingerie before he took her to the dressing room, banged her head against the wall, pulled down her trunks and entered her. Carroll said she did not remember the exact date or year of the alleged rape.
Jurors were tasked with deciding whether Trump raped, sexually assaulted, or forcibly touched Carroll, and were separately asked whether Trump defamed Carroll. Jurors found that Trump sexually assaulted her but not that he raped her.
Before the jurors began deliberations, Judge Lewis Kaplan defined rape for them as non-consensual “intercourse” through “forceful coercion”. He defined sexual abuse as non-consensual “sexual intercourse through coercion”.
Jurors awarded Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for her battery claim, and $2.7 million in compensatory damages and $280,000 in punitive damages for her defamation claim.
Trump’s legal team attacked the credibility of Carroll’s account, including why she did not report the matter to police or shout during the alleged incident.
Two of Carroll’s friends said she told them about the alleged rape at the time but swore them to secrecy because they feared Trump would use his fame and money to retaliate if she came forward.
Carroll told jurors she decided to break her silence in 2017 after rape allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein prompted hundreds of women to come forward with cases of sexual violence by powerful men. She had made her account public during Trump’s presidency.
She said Trump’s public denials ruined her career and provoked a campaign of vicious online harassment by his supporters.
While Trump did not testify at the trial, a video clip from his October 2022 deposition showed him mistaking Carroll for one of his ex-wives in a black-and-white photo among several at an event.
In the statement, Trump said, “It’s Marla,” referring to his second wife, Marla Maples. Trump previously said that he could not rape Carroll because she was “not my type.”
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