Donald Trump found liable in E Jean Carroll defamation case

Former President Donald Trump is on the hook for damages in E. Jean Carroll’s upcoming trial accusing him of defaming her by claiming she made up her sexual abuse allegations against him, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Trump’s 2019 claim that the 79-year-old “Ask E. Jean” advice columnist had concocted the abuse charges “to get publicity” was a lie made with “actual malice,” Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote.

Kaplan in his ruling cited a Manhattan federal jury’s May verdict finding Trump, 77, liable for sexual abuse and defamation – and ordering him to pay $5 million in damages – in a separate lawsuit brought by Carroll, who accused him of raping her inside Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s.

The Wednesday decision is a major defeat for Trump in the case, and leaves the question of how much in damages the former president will be ordered to pay as the only open issue to be determined at trial.

Kaplan also rejected Trump’s bid to limit the damages award in the upcoming case because of the $5 million he was already ordered to pay.

That case in part stemmed on Trump’s claim – which jurors found to be false – on the social media app Truth Social in 2022 that Carroll’s allegation was “a complete con job.”

Trump’s efforts to limit damages in the upcoming case over his 2019 statements are completely “without merit,” Kaplan wrote.

Manhattan jurors in May found that the “preponderance of the evidence” shows that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the Fifth Avenue department store in the 1990s, Kaplan said in his ruling.

The May verdict also shows that jurors “determined by clear and convincing evidence that Ms. Carroll did not fabricate her sexual assault accusation,” the judge added.

Wednesday’s ruling is just the latest legal blow suffered by Trump in the case.

In June, the same judge blocked Trump’s effort to throw out the defamation suit, finding that the ex-commander-in-chief can’t invoke presidential immunity.

Trump is also facing a total of 91 charges across four active criminal cases in Manhattan, Washington DC, Georgia and Florida — and could spend up to 712 years and six months behind bars if convicted in all of the cases.