A jury ordered President Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to writer E. Jean Carroll, who sued him for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of rape.       

“I have sat on trial after trial for months in this state, the state of New York,” Mr. Trump’s attorney Alina Habba told reporters outside the Federal courthouse on Friday afternoon after the crushing verdict. “And now you see what you get in New York. Don’t get it twisted,” she shouted, “I am so proud to stand with President Trump, but I am not proud to stand with what I saw in that courtroom.” 

The day had not started well for Mr. Trump and his fierce attorney, who is either unfamiliar with Federal courtroom procedures, or simply feels entitled to disregard them. The presiding judge, Lewis Kaplan, threatened to send Ms. Habba to jail, if she didn’t stop what he deemed her inappropriate line of argument.   

“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup — now sit down,” Judge Kaplan blared. Mr. Trump was seated next to Ms. Habba at the defense table, inside the courtroom. The jury had not been brought in yet. 

Ms. Carroll, an 80 year old former advice columnist and author, sued Mr. Trump over statements he made in June 2019, after New York magazine published an excerpt of her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.”

The excerpt describes an alleged encounter with Mr. Trump at the upscale Manhattan department store, Bergdorf Goodman, in 1996. According to Ms. Carroll, she ran into Mr. Trump by coincidence. He asked her to help him pick out a gift, and they went up to the lingerie floor. There, Ms. Carroll claims, Mr. Trump pushed her into a dressing room and raped her. 

After Mr. Trump, who was president when the story was published in June 2019, became aware of the accusation, he publicly denied ever having met her, and said the woman was not his “type”. Ms. Carrol’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), referred to his statements as “brutal and immediate.”

Mr. Trump threatened her client, Ms. Kaplan argued in her closing statement on Friday. She cited Mr. Trump, “It’s a disgrace and people should pay dearly.” In another statement he said,  “People have to be careful because they are playing a very dangerous game.”      

The sole purpose of the trial was to determine if Mr. Trump’s June 2019 responses and his ongoing social media insults damaged Ms. Carroll’s reputation and continue to cause her significant harm. 

Ms. Carroll had filed another lawsuit, Carroll II, which went to trial in May 2023 with the same judge, in the same courtroom. Though the jury did not find Mr. Trump liable for rape, it ruled that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll in 1996 and that he defamed her in October 2022 by denying their encounter ever took place, effectively branding the journalist as a liar. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million in combined damages for both the sexual assault and the defamation. 

Despite the $5 million judgment, Mr. Trump continued to insult Ms. Carroll, calling her “a whack job” at a widely-viewed CNN town hall shortly after the verdict. And through this week, he continued to insult her on his social media network, Truth Social. An indignant Mr. Trump reposted sexually salacious tweets Ms. Carroll had written several years ago. He also accused Ms. Carroll of naming her cat “Vagina.”        

The tricky and infuriating issue for the defense in this latest trial was that the judge ordered them to accept the May 2023 decision as fact. Neither Mr. Trump nor his attorneys, nor anyone, was permitted to deny or refute or argue the established facts that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll 28 years ago and defamed her in October 2022.

Since Mr. Trump insists on his innocence, this legal predicament led to numerous confrontations with the judge. He had stricken several of Mr. Trump’s comments from the record, when the former president briefly testified on Thursday.    

While Mr. Trump did not attend the May proceedings, he attended this trial every day, except on the day of his mother in law’s funeral. His presence at the trial may not have been a wise strategy. Mr, Trump, like his attorney, showed little respect for the court, making loud comments from the defense table and angering the judge (and perhaps the jury). And Friday, the day of the verdict, proved to be the most dramatic day.           

In the morning Ms. Habba failed to recognize that she could not introduce new evidence after both parties had rested their case. She asked the judge if she could show the jury a slide of tweets, which had not previously been introduced as evidence, for her closing argument.

The tweets by various users, she explained, were dismissive and insulting about Ms. Carroll’s assault allegation a few hours before the then-president denounced her. Thus, she argued, the tweets  proved that the harm was not incited by the president. 

The judge denied her request to show the tweets. And when she didn’t stop insisting, he threatened to throw her in jail.

“F– it,” Ms. Habba mumbled so close to the microphone that the court could hear her.  

 “It is extremely rare for a court to reopen a case to receive additional evidence after both sides rested,” a federal appellate attorney told the Sun on Friday evening. “At minimum, it would have to be evidence that had not been available to the party previously.” The attorney gave an example. “In a murder trial if the person, who was presumed dead, suddenly walked into the courtroom, a judge would most likely allow the case to be reopened to introduce the fact that no one was murdered,” the attorney said. 

Mr. Trump, who evidently is not aware of federal court etiquette, was not pleased. Less than ten minutes after the jury was brought in and the lead attorney for Ms. Carroll, Ms. Kaplan, embarked on her closing statement, the former president abruptly rose from his chair and stormed out of the courtroom. 

“The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” Judge Kaplan ordered. 

Ms. Kaplan continued with her argument, trying to explain to the nine members of the anonymous jury how they could determine a dollar amount to compensate for the harm that her client has suffered from Mr. Trump’s defamation. 

Ms. Carroll had originally asked for $10 million in total. But now, her attorney suggested at least $24 million. She broke the damages down to reputational repair, for which she sought $12 million, and emotional distress, another $12 million, and then she left an open amount for punitive damages.    

“She went from writing the nation’s leading advice column to running a Substack. And now the only assignment she gets is to write about Trump,” Ms. Kaplan told the jury, adding that the three days of being called a liar by a sitting president turned her client’s universe upside down.   

“It would cost Carroll a national reputation, and Trump has a global audience,” she said. Throughout the trial the plaintiffs had argued that Mr. Trump’s defamatory statements unleashed countless threats of violence against Ms. Carroll, including threats to rape and kill her. One time, Ms. Carroll tweeted that the earth needed care and love, and Twitter users commented that she was “a c–t”, and a “money grabbing whore.” 

“The man who attacked her, came after her again,” Ms. Kaplan continued, and she told the jury that the insults had not stopped. Hence the punitive damages, she reasoned, should be high enough to make him stop.        

“You can consider his wealth,” Ms. Kaplan told the jury, “ He doesn’t care about the truth, he doesn’t care about the law, but he cares about money.” 

She asked, how much money would it take to make him stop? A slide, Ms. Kaplan showed, listed the values of various Trump properties, and stated his brand to be worth 10 billion dollars. “He can spend a million dollars a day for the next ten years,” she said, “and he’d still have money.”  

The jury decided that the amount “to make him stop”, the punitive damages, should be $65 million. Additionally they awarded Ms. Carroll $7.3 million for reparational damages, $11 million for the emotional distress, adding up to a total sum of $83,3 million. 

Mr. Trump was not present in the courtroom when the jury returned with the verdict at 4:27 pm, after less than three hours of deliberation. He had returned for his lawyer’s closing statement, and stayed for the rebuttal, but left the courthouse at 4pm.   

“Absolutely ridiculous!” He posted on Truth Social after the verdict, “I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!” 

Ms. Habba also told reporters that she would appeal the verdict. 

“We did not win today,” she told reporters, “but we will win.”

Ms. Carroll did not speak to reporters, but released a statement: “This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down.”