By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $5 million verdict won by E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump when a jury found the U.S. president-elect liable for sexually assaulting and later defaming the former magazine columnist .
The decision was made by a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
The May 2023 verdict stemmed from an incident around 1996 in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, where Carroll said Trump raped her, and an October 2022 Truth Social post in which Trump denied Carroll's claim as a hoax .
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Although jurors in federal court in Manhattan did not conclude that Trump committed rape, they awarded the former Elle magazine advice columnist $2.02 million for sexual assault and $2.98 million for defamation.
Another jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her and damaging her reputation in June 2019, when he first denied her rape claim.
In both denials, Trump said he did not know Carroll, that she was “not my type,” and that she had made up the rape allegation to promote her memoir. He is appealing the $83.3 million verdict.
Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An attorney for Carroll did not immediately respond to a similar request.
The cases against Carroll continue despite Trump winning a second four-year term in the White House on November 5.
In 1997, in a case involving former President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that sitting presidents have no immunity from civil lawsuits in federal court over actions that predated and were unrelated to their official duties as president.
Trump's lawyers argued that the $5 million verdict should be thrown out because the judge, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, should not have allowed jurors to hear testimony from two other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
One, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, said Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
Trump's lawyers also said the judge should not have let jurors watch a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump explicitly bragged about forcing himself on women.
But the appeals court said Trump failed to show that Kaplan made a mistake, or that any errors warranted a new trial.
Judge Kaplan also oversaw the trial that ended with the $83.3 million verdict.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; additional reporting by Luc Cohen; editing by Louise Heavens)
