Former United States President Donald Trump was found liable on Tuesday for the “sexual assault” of a woman in 1996 by a civil court in New York and will have to pay her five million dollars in damages.
The nine jurors unanimously determined that Mr. Trump was not responsible for a “rape” as accused by former press columnist E. Jean Carroll, according to an AFP journalist present in the room. courtroom in Manhattan Federal Civil Court.
The jury also decided that Mr. Trump should pay him $5 million in damages for this sexual assault in a New York department store in 1996 and for defamation from the revelation of the facts by Mr.me Carroll in 2019.
“This verdict is a disgrace”, immediately denounced on his social network Truth Social the former American president.
His campaign team said in a statement that he intended to appeal the decision.
His complainant, Mr.me Carroll, 79, was very emotional and hugged several of her lawyers and those around her who had tears in their eyes.
She left, smiling, under her sunglasses, the Manhattan courthouse without making a statement and accompanied by her faithful lawyer Roberta Kaplan.
The civil trial lasted two weeks and Donald Trump did not come to testify in Manhattan federal court, presided over by Judge Lewis Kaplan.
The former tenant of the White House (2017-2021), who intends to win it back in 2024, has always denied the facts.
Book of 2019
Just after the jury retired to deliberate, Mr.e Kaplan had deplored that Donald Trump had published a new post on his social network Truth Social, while the judge had asked that he refrain from disrupting the debates by interposed media.
The former president asserted, wrongly, that he had not been authorized to speak at this trial, when the judge had invited him to testify on numerous occasions.
E. Jean Carroll had made her first revelations in 2019 in a book, where she accused Donald Trump, then President of the United States, for the first time. She had initially filed a complaint for defamation, because he had accused her of lying to sell his work.
Then, last November, she filed a rape lawsuit, thanks to a new New York state law allowing alleged victims to sue in civil court even for potentially statute-barred facts.
While there are no eyewitnesses who saw Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll more than 25 years ago on the shelves – deserted according to the plaintiff – of the store, two close friends of the journalist confirmed in court that she had confided to them, shortly after the alleged facts, to have been “assaulted” or “attacked” by the businessman.
Two other women, among those who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault in the past, also gave their testimony before the jury.
According to M.e Kaplan, the former American president would have acted each time according to the same “modus operandi”, the one he himself describes in a video that has become famous, where we hear in 2005 boasting of kissing and touching women as he pleases.