Former US President Donald Trump was ordered Friday by a New York civil court to pay $83.3 million to author E. Jean Carroll for defaming her, amid accusations of rape in the 1990s.
This astronomical amount, decided by the popular jury in the civil trial brought by former journalist E. Jean Carroll, 80, against Mr. Trump, 77, breaks down into $65 million in damages, $11 million in dollars in damages for reputational damage and 7.3 million in financial compensation, report American media present in the courtroom, including the New York Times and CNN.
Earlier today, Trump abruptly walked out of the defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll.
As lawyers for both sides began their closing arguments, the tempestuous businessman suddenly got up from his chair and bounded out of the courtroom in Manhattan’s civil federal court, according to an AFP reporter .
However, he remained within the courthouse grounds.
Judge Lewis Kaplan could only note that “Mr. Trump just got up and left the room.”
The lawyer for plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, (no relation to the judge), had just said that the former president had “continued throughout the trial to defame” her client.
“FALSE Lewinsky story”
At the end of the morning, Mr. Trump had posted around twenty messages on his Truth Social platform once again accusing Mr.me Carroll of having put together “a FALSE Monica Lewinsky story” – named after the White House intern scandal that nearly took away President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s – and of “seeking to EXTORT” money.
Big favorite of the Republican primaries and very likely opponent of Joe Biden in the presidential election in November, Donald Trump added his usual political denigrations on Truth Social: “Joe Biden the corrupt and the scoundrel” would orchestrate “a” witch hunt against his political opponent , managed and led by radical left Democrats. »
The trial, which began on January 16, ended with the lawyers’ final arguments.
The plaintiff, E. Jean Carroll, is a former columnist for the American edition of the magazine She who accused Donald Trump of rape in 1996 in a fitting room of a New York department store.
“Something like fake”
Last May, the same court, seized by another complaint from Mme Carroll, had civilly sentenced the mogul to five million dollars in damages for sexual assault 28 years ago and defamatory comments against her in 2022.
On Thursday, the ex-president briefly defended himself at the trial but his freedom of speech was strictly limited by the judge to avoid any verbal slippage.
He simply indicated with a “yes” that he had made the remarks targeted by a first complaint in 2019 against accusations of rape that had just been launched, for the first time publicly, by E. Jean Carroll in a book.
“She said something that I considered to be false,” Mr. Trump said.
But again on Wednesday evening, he launched 37 written attacks on Truth Social against Mme Carroll whom he continues to denigrate and insult by calling her “crazy”, with a “phony story”, which he has “never seen of [sa] life “. “She’s sick,” he repeated during the procedure.
Judge Kaplan, who presided over the first trial in May 2023, ordered that this second only focus on Donald Trump’s comments and not on the complainant’s accusations of rape.
Including this case, Mr. Trump is the subject of six criminal or civil trials this year.