Trump Found Liable For Sexual Abuse

Improve the News Foundation -

Facts

  • After two-and-a-half hours of deliberations, a Manhattan, N.Y., jury found former Pres. Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming former Elle Magazine columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996. However, they returned a not-guilty verdict for rape.1
  • Though Trump doesn't face any criminal consequences due to this being a civil case, the jury did award Carroll a collective $5M in both compensatory and punitive damages.2
  • While Carroll testified that Trump pushed and assaulted her against the wall of the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina drew similarities between her story and that of a 2012 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode.3
  • During the trial, in which Trump declined to testify, jurors were shown sections of a videotaped deposition from October 2022 in which he consistently denied the allegations. He recently called the process a "disgrace" and the allegations "false."4
  • Carroll held her head down as the verdict was read, then nodded when she heard the jury finding in favor of her defamation claim after the former president denied attacking her in the fitting room.5
  • Trump, who, in the wake of the verdict, said he would submit an appeal and posted on Truth Social, "I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS," has been accused of sexual misconduct by about two dozen women, though this was the first to make it to trial.6

Sources: 1Business Insider, 2Al Jazeera, 3Wall Street Journal, 4Improve the News 5New York Post, and 6ABC News.

Narratives

  • Pro-Trump narrative, as provided by Federalist. Of course, a liberal jury from the blue state of New York would believe that, with no witnesses or scene of the crime evidence, Donald Trump forced himself upon a woman in a public department store that typically kept changing rooms locked until an attendant opened it for a customer. After Carroll publicly stated this was not rape for years, she saw the golden ticket when presented with a political operative (aka a lawyer) to sue the billionaire for millions of dollars.
  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Huffington Post. Thanks to New York's new sexual assault survivor law, E. Jean Carroll was finally able to get justice for what the openly misogynistic Trump did to her decades ago. It's true that this is unsurprising; not because her story lacked credibility but rather that his only defense was that Carroll was not his "type." Trump has fumbled his way through this defamation saga for years, and his lies — and sins — have finally caught up to him.