Appeal court upholds, Trump must compensate E. Jean Carroll with $83.3 million

A federal appeals court has unanimously upheld the $83.3 million compensation imposed on the US president, Donald Trump, in favour of the writer E. Jean Carroll, because she was found guilty of defamation against him. An earlier court had convicted Trump in civil court for comments against Carroll, after the writer had accused him of a rape that took place decades earlier in a Manhattan department store, an assault for which he was found liable for sexual abuse (i.e., molesting her). The Court also rejected Trump's argument that the Supreme Court's decision to extend presidential immunity prevented accountability in the case brought by Carroll.

The decision of the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals leaves intact the sanction imposed on the president, finding it reasonable 'in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.

A Manhattan civil jury had awarded $88.3 million in damages last year following a trial centred on Trump's repeated social media attacks on Carroll for his allegations of sexual assault in a Manhattan department store in 1996. That settlement followed a separate trial in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million. The compensation was upheld by an appeals court last December.

In a memoir, and again in a trial in 2023, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman's Fifth Avenue in 1996 began with a flirtation between the two while they were shopping, only to end in a violent scuffle in a dressing room. Carroll claimed that Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her stockings and forcibly assaulted her.

A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded that he had not committed rape, as defined by New York law. Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to sell his book.