A choose in New York has dominated that Donald Trump is answerable for defaming author E Jean Carroll for a second time.
Decide Lewis Kaplan issued a “partial abstract judgment” that the previous president had made defamatory statements with “precise malice” about Ms Carroll in 2019 after she went public with claims he had raped her a long time earlier.
A civil trial scheduled for January will solely decide how a lot the previous president ought to pay her in financial damages, Decide Kaplan dominated.
In Might, a jury discovered Mr Trump answerable for sexual assault and defamation of the previous Elle recommendation columnist and awarded her $5m in damages.
In a judgment issued on Wednesday, Decide Kaplan discovered that the jury’s verdict in that case confirmed Mr Trump’s 2019 statements have been false, and have been made with “precise malice”.
“[T]he jury discovered that Mr Trump knew that his assertion that Ms Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior functions was false or that he acted with reckless disregard as to if it was false. Whether or not Mr Trump made the 2019 statements with precise malice raises the identical difficulty.”
He additionally said that any damages awarded from the second defamation ruling shouldn’t be restricted in scope by the $5m award from the earlier trial.
In a press release offered to The Impartial, Ms Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan stated: “We stay up for trial restricted to damages for the unique defamatory statements Donald Trump made about our shopper E Jean Carroll in 2019.”
The primary trial in Might heard graphic testimony from the previous Elle recommendation columnist about how she was sexually assaulted on the luxurious Manhattan division retailer Bergdorf Goodman within the Nineteen Nineties.
Ms Carroll, 79, first revealed particulars of the sexual assault in a e-book excerpt that ran in New York journal in June 2019.
When Mr Trump angrily denied the claims and attacked her personally in White Home interviews and press releases, she sued him for defamation.
The Division of Justice (DOJ) initially defended Mr Trump within the civil lawsuit, dubbed Carroll I, claiming in court docket paperwork that he was “performing inside the scope of his presidential duties” when he made “crude and disrespectful” feedback about Ms Carroll.
Then in March, the DOJ dropped its plans to defend the previous president. It concluded that there was “now not a adequate foundation to conclude that the previous President was motivated by ‘greater than an insignificant’ want to serve the US Authorities”.
In 2022, Ms Carroll sued the previous president for sexual assault after New York handed a regulation permitting survivors a one-year window to carry their abusers accountable no matter when the assault happened.
That case, known as Carroll II, went to trial earlier this yr, the place a nine-person jury dominated that Mr Trump was answerable for sexual assault and defamation.
Legal professionals for Mr Trump didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.