(Headline USA) A federal appeals court on Monday shot down President-elect Donald Trump’s appeal in an outlandish defamation case involving serial rape accuser who was funded by a top tech billionaire to wage the activist lawfare campaign in a failed effort to disgrace the GOP leader.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a jury’s finding in a civil case that Trump had sexually abused Manhattan socialite and ex-magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in an upscale department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
The Manhattan jury’s finding in May 2023, during the heat of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, overlooked considerable contradictory evidence, including Carroll’s hazy and inconsistent recollection of the events, which bore remarkable similarity to the plotline of a Law and Order episode.
It issued $5 million award for defamation and sexual abuse—the latter being a lesser charge than rape with a significantly lower evidentiary threshold The abuse claim might include actions like inappropriate touching, but not vaginal penetration.
Carroll, whose advice column ran in the women’s magazine Elle from 1993 to 2019, reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her, including former CBS President Les Moonves.
In case you didn’t know, E Jean Carroll has accused many men of raping or sexually assaulting her…
Including a babysitter’s boyfriend, a dentist, a camp counselor, an unnamed college date, an unnamed boss and CBS chief executive Les Moonves – Per The National Pulse
This is why…
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) January 27, 2024
Her bizarre social-media history also included posts making light of sexual trauma and even asking her followers if they found Trump sexually attractive.
However, Trump was prevented from submitting them as evidence in the trial.
President Trump wasn’t allowed to use his accuser’s social media posts as evidence in court.
The justice system in America is rotten to its core. The public and the jurors should have been able to see how demented the thoughts and mindset of E Jean Carroll truly are. pic.twitter.com/RsWywSgbpC
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 31, 2024
Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying an assault ever happened. But he briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial earlier this year that resulted in an $83.3 million award.
The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019, after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir.
In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected arguments by Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had made multiple decisions that undermined Trump’s due process, including allowing testimony from two other women who had accused Trump of sexually abusing them.
The judge—who was revealed to have personal ties to Carroll’s lawyers—also had allowed the jury to view the an Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s crotches consensually because of his influence as a wealthy celebrity.
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”
In September, both Carroll, 81, and Trump, 78, attended oral arguments by the 2nd Circuit.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement that Trump was elected by voters who delivered “an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”
Carroll’s case was bankrolled in large part by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, an associate of deceased pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffman has been implicated in several other “get Trump” schemes in the past, including one that involved vote fraud.
Roberta Kaplan—a lawyer who represented Carroll during the trial and is not related to the judge but did have an outside personal relationship with him—said in a statement: “Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
The first jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
In January, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. That jury had been instructed by the judge to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll. The appeal of that verdict has not yet been heard.
Carroll claimed during both trials that her life as an Elle magazine columnist was spoiled by Trump’s public comments, which she said motivated some people to send her death threats and made her fearful to leave the upstate New York cabin, the “Mouse House,” where she lives with her cat, Vagina T. Fireball, and a dog named Tits.
Here’s Trump’s bogus accuser E. Jean Carroll during an interview with Elle magazine in 2017. Carroll lived with mice in a cabin she called the “Mouse House,” painted trees and rocks outside her log cabin blue, and traveled the country, in a Prius named Miss Bingley, with her… pic.twitter.com/hGo7rYDcLy
— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) May 17, 2023
Trump testified for under three minutes at the second trial and was not permitted to challenge conclusions reached by the May 2023 jury.
During appeals arguments in September, Trump lawyer D. John Sauer said testimony from witnesses who recalled Carroll telling them about the 1996 encounter with Trump immediately afterward was improper because the witnesses had “egregious bias” against Trump.
Sauer also said the judge also should have excluded the testimony of the two women who claimed Trump committed similar acts of sex abuse against them in the 1970s and in 2005. Trump has denied those allegations too.
“In each of the three encounters, Mr. Trump engaged in an ordinary conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and proceeded to kiss and forcefully touch her without her consent,” the 2nd Circuit wrote. “The acts are sufficiently similar to show a pattern.”
It said the Access Hollywood tape was “directly corroborative” of the testimony by the women of the pattern of behavior they experienced.
Depending on the outcome of the appeal for the second defamation trial, Trump could wind up profiting from the ordeal. ABC News recently settled with the president-elect in a $15 million defamation suit brought by Trump after former Clinton surrogate George Stephanopoulos falsely and maliciously claimed Trump had been found guilty of rape.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
