Trump listens as E. Jean Carroll lawyer again accuses him of assault in $5 million appeal

Donald Trump listened on Friday as three New York federal appeals judges asked lawyers for the former president and writer E. Jean Carroll if the jury that awarded Carroll $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation should have been allowed to hear about a separate assault allegation involving Trump.

Carroll's lawyer said it fit a pattern in which he would pleasantly chat with a woman and then "pounce," while Trump's attorney argued the testimony was improper.

Trump, who is set to debate Vice President Kamala Harris in a pivotal match-up next Tuesday, continued to attack Carroll at a press conference after the arguments.

"She made up a story and fabricated 100%," he said. "I would have had no interest in meeting her in any way, shape, or form."

Trump is appealing a 2023 civil jury verdict that he sexually abused advice columnist Carroll decades ago in a department store, and then defamed her in 2022 by calling her allegations a "con job." A jury in a separate case awarded Carroll another $83.3 million in January for defamatory denials by Trump in 2019. Trump is also appealing that verdict.

Speaking to reporters, Trump claimed he had never met Carroll, adding that he didn't think a 1987 photo showing him talking with Carroll and her then-husband, John Johnson, counts.

In a 2022 deposition, Trump was shown the photo and mistook Carroll for his ex-wife, Marla Maples, despite having claimed Carroll wasn't his "type."

More: Did Donald Trump rape E. Jean Carroll? Here's what a jury and judge said.

In court the Trump team attacked trial Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision to allow two other women to testify that Trump had also assaulted them.

One of the women described Trump pushing her against a wall and forcibly kissing her during a mid-2000s magazine interview. The other said he suddenly began grabbing her breasts, trying to kiss her, and reaching up her skirt in a "tussling match" when they were seated next to each other on a plane in the late 1970s.

Carroll's lawyers have defended the relevance of that testimony, saying it showed 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."

Should jury have heard the airplane account?

The arguments Friday in a Manhattan federal appeals court centered especially on the sexual assault story on the plane. John Sauer, a former solicitor general of Missouri, argued on behalf of Trump that there wasn't a law barring that kind of conduct on a plane at the time of the incident, and therefore it shouldn't have been presented to the jury to bolster Carroll's own story.

Judge Susan L. Carney appeared to treat that argument with some skepticism. She suggested Congress passed statutes intended to allow evidence regarding serious conduct.

"I'm not sure how the jurisdictional element, the precise jurisdictional element, whether in an airplane, in the specific maritime jurisdiction, or what have what have you, impacts the conduct that Congress was willing to let juries consider in adjudicating these kinds of cases," Carney said.

Sauer responded that Congress' own statutory language only allowed for testimony about "prohibited" conduct, and that didn't include a sexual assault in airspace.

Roberta Kaplan, who isn't related to Judge Lewis Kaplan, argued for Carroll that the plane allegation would have been a crime under a separate statute that covered assaults on planes. Carroll's lawyers have said the story, along with the magazine interview allegation, is similar to what Carroll said Trump did to her.

Judge Denny Chin questioned whether, even if the alleged plane incident was a crime, it was sufficiently similar to Carroll's allegations to be relevant to her case. "The fact pattern is different from the other incidents, which were in much more private places," he said.

Kaplan conceded that the woman didn't describe Trump leading her into a private part of the plane, but said the rest of the pattern "is exactly the same."

"He had a pattern of having kind of pleasant chatting with a woman," Kaplan said. "And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he would, for lack of better term, your honors, pounce."

In the appeal against the $5 million verdict, Trump's lawyers have said he should have been able to tell the jury that the case involved "politically motivated bias." They also say the jury shouldn't have been allow to hear his infamous "Access Hollywood" statement that he kisses women without waiting for consent and that stars can grab women's genitals.

Judge Myrna Pérez rounded out the panel of three judges who heard the arguments Friday.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump in court as E. Jean Carroll lawyer again accuses him of assault