HOUSTON, United States
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that US President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million in damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for making false statements and public attacks against her regarding Carroll's accusations of the president sexually assaulting her decades ago, according to media reports.
The ruling upheld a civil jury's finding that Trump repeatedly attacked Carroll's credibility on social media through a smear campaign, with the three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the president's appeal of the multi-million dollar defamation award, saying that the "jury's damages awards are fair and reasonable."
"The record in this case supports the district court's determination that 'the degree of reprehensibility' of Mr. Trump's conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented," the judges wrote in their ruling. "Carroll was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury."
Trump's legal team had argued that the $65 million punitive damage award was unreasonably excessive and pushed for a new trial despite the US Supreme Court's expansion of presidential immunity.
The appeals court, however, rejected those arguments, writing that the president's "extraordinary and unprecedented" false attacks against Carroll, 81, justified the steep award.
"Given the unique and egregious facts of this case, we conclude that the punitive damages award did not exceed the bounds of reasonableness," the judges wrote.
Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, praised the decision.
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, in a comprehensive 70-page ruling, that E. Jean Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not," Kaplan said in a statement, adding that they "look forward to an end to the appellate process."
During the trial, Carroll testified that she received hundreds of death threats after Trump spoke out against her. She also lost her decades-long career as an advice columnist at Elle magazine and was no longer invited to make appearances on television shows.
Trump's public attacks against Carroll exploded after she released her 2019 memoir, which accused the president of sexually assaulting her decades earlier at a New York City department store. During the trial, Carroll described her encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman's Fifth Avenue store in 1996, which she said started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle and sexual assault by Trump inside a dressing room.
Trump repeatedly denied Carroll's claims and accused her through public statements and social media attacks of making it up to help sell her book. The president also said that Carroll was "not my type."
The appeals court said in its ruling that the original trial judge "did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury's duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case."
The judges also noted that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them "more extreme and frequent as the trial approached."
"He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself," the appeals court said of Trump. "In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll 'a thousand times.'"
Trump's attorneys responded to the ruling, calling for "an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including what they called the Democrat-funded travesty of the "Carroll Hoaxes."
Legal experts expect the case to make its way to the Republican-majority US Supreme Court for a final judgment.