'This case was not close': Why E. Jean Carroll says Trump sex abuse verdict should stand
Former President Donald Trump profoundly distorted what happened at his 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against E. Jean Carroll in his plea to get the jury's verdict tossed out, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll's legal team told an appeals court late-Wednesday.
The jury in the civil case found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll as well as defaming her in 2022, when he called her assault allegations a "con job." They awarded Carroll $5 million.
In November, Trump's legal team attacked the trial judge's rulings on evidence and urged the New York-based federal appeals court to throw out the verdict. They said in a brief that Trump should have been able to tell the jury about "politically motivated bias" in the case, that two other women shouldn't have been able to testify that he also assaulted them, and the jury shouldn't have heard his infamous "Access Hollywood" tape comments that he kisses women without their consent and that stars "can do anything" to women, including grabbing their genitals.
In a court filing responding to Trump's brief, Carroll's lawyers said "[t]his case was not close" and she "presented overwhelming evidence" to support her sexual abuse and defamation claims. Carroll herself testified for three days, and two of her friends also described hearing her story of Trump's assault soon after it happened.
"That transformed the case from 'he said / she said' into 'he said / they said,'" according to the filing.
The $5 million Carroll victory in May of 2023 — sizable as it is — pales in comparison to Carroll's $83.3 million January victory in a defamation lawsuit tied to 2019 statements by Trump after Carroll first went public with her story, including that "people should pay dearly for such false accusations." Trump has also filed an appeal in that case.
More: Did Donald Trump rape E. Jean Carroll? Here's what a jury and judge said.
Assault stories from other women
In Trump's brief asking the appeals court to toss out the $5 million verdict, the former president's lawyers said the two women who testified about their own experiences with Trump weren't sufficiently reliable to be allowed into the trial because they described brief events from long ago.
One of the women said she was seated next to Trump on a plane decades ago when he suddenly tried to kiss and grope her, including grabbing her breasts and reaching up her skirt in a "tussling match," until she jolted out of the seat and stormed away. The other, who was interviewing Trump for a magazine article in the mid 2000s, described him pushing her against a wall and forcibly kissing her.
Trump's lawyers told the appeals court that his 2016 presidential election victory "apparently infuriated" the two women, and Carroll contacted both of them while he was campaigning for the 2020 election. Those election-related events "reduced the reliability" of what the women had to say, he argued.
Carroll's lawyers shot back Wednesday that the other women's testimony was relevant to her case because, if believed by the jury, it showed Trump had a propensity to sexually assault women "in markedly similar ways across time."
At least 19 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including 13 who have accused him of sexual assault or non-consensual physical contact. Trump has denied the allegations.
"As their testimony shows, Trump engaged in a pattern of abruptly lunging at a woman in a semi-public place, pressing his body against her, kissing her, and sexually touching her without consent, and later categorically denying the allegations and declaring that the accuser was too unattractive for him to have assaulted her," Carroll's team said.
Access Hollywood: 'You can do anything'
Trump's team also attacked the trial judge's decision to allow the jury to hear a portion of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump said he just starts kissing beautiful women.
"It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything," Trump said on the recording.
The jury shouldn't have heard the tape because his statements "involved abstract speculation" about things a person "can do," Trump's lawyers argued. "There was no statement attributed to President Trump on the recording indicating that he 'had done' any of those things."
That's "just a lawyerly way of dismissing the tape as 'locker-room talk,'" Carroll's team shot back Wednesday, a possible reference to Trump's explanation during a 2016 presidential debate.
Trump's statements on the tape don't reflect "how people usually recount consensual sexual interactions," they added.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: E. Jean Carroll fights Trump effort to overthrow sexual abuse verdict
