Trump suffers big loss in E. Jean Carroll defamation case, judge says he's liable

E. Jean Carroll, who accused former President Donald Trump of rape, arrives at Manhattan Federal Court for the continuation of the civil case, in New York City, May 9, 2023. Brendan McDermid | Reuters

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier. Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll's lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her. Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff. But Kaplan found that Carroll was entitled to a partial summary judgment on the question of Trump's liability in the case. He cited the fact that jurors at a trial in a separate but related lawsuit in May found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and defamed her in statements he made when he denied her allegation last fall.

Carroll's lawyers argued, and Kaplan agreed, that the jury's verdict in that case effectively settled the legal question of whether Trump had defamed her in similar comments he made about Carroll in 2019. "The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump's 2019 statements therefore depends — like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement — on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her," Kaplan wrote in his 25-page decision in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. "The jury's finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements," Kaplan wrote. The ruling is the latest in a series of big losses for Trump in lawsuits filed by Carroll.