A jury found former President Donald Trump should pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages in a defamation trial that ended on Friday.
The amount awarded to Carroll is well over three times more than her legal team asked for in its closing argument – $24 million – and more than eight times the amount Carroll requested in her initial lawsuit — $10 million, according to CNN.
The jury found that Trump owed Carroll $11 million to cover the costs of a campaign to repair the harm done to her reputation and $7.3 million to address the emotional harm the 80-year-old writer sustained from remarks Trump made in 2019 about her and her accusations of rape. The jury ordered Trump to pay another $65 million in punitive damages.
Trump promised to appeal the decision in a statement released after the jury’s findings.
“Absolutely ridiculous!” the statement began. “I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a political weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”
“THIS IS NOT AMERICA!” pic.twitter.com/A0uQ9RMcoI
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) January 26, 2024
The jury spent two hours 45 minutes in deliberations after closing arguments wrapped on Friday afternoon. Afterward, the verdict was read aloud to the courtroom. Trump, who attended the trial earlier in the day, was not present to hear the jury’s decision.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan thanked the jurors for their work and warned them against going public now that the trial is over.
“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury, and I won’t say anything more about it,” he said.
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The decision by the jury caps off an at times chaotic final day in court in which Kaplan threatened to put one of Trump’s attorneys behind bars and in which the former president at one point stormed out of the courtroom as Carroll’s legal team was making its closing argument.
Kaplan threatened to throw Trump attorney Alina Habba in “lockup” after the two got into a heated exchange over allowable evidence in the courtroom.
Ahead of opening arguments in the case, Trump’s legal team motioned that it wanted to show a slide to jurors of materials not admitted into evidence. Carroll’s legal team objected, and the dispute led to an argument between Habba and the judge.
“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup,” Kaplan told Habba. “Sit down.”
Habba sat down immediately after.
Later in the trial, Trump abruptly left the courtroom minutes into closing arguments by Carroll’s legal team. Kaplan made a note of the disturbance: “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”