A New York federal court jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual assault, but not rape, and defamation of former journalist E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday and will have to compensate her with US$ 5 million in damages.
The nine jurors, six men and three women, at the end of about three hours of deliberation, unanimously declared Trump civilly responsible for sexual assault and defamation, although not rape, according to an AFP journalist present in the room.
The amounts set to compensate the 79-year-old ex-journalist rise to 5 million dollars.
Accused only through civil and not criminal proceedings, Trump described as “shame” sentence. “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is.”he wrote on his Truth Social network.
Carroll sued Trump last year for rape and defamation after he called him “complete scam”, “falsehood” and “lie” the revelation in a book she published in 2019 that the Republican tycoon had raped her in a luxury department store in the 1990s.
Emotional, Carroll hugged her lawyers after hearing the ruling. Trump’s chief attorney, Joe Tacopina, went to shake her hand.
Later, the ex-journalist left the court smiling without making a statement.
“We are very happy”, was limited to saying his lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
“You are very brave, thank you!”one of the protesters gathered outside the courthouse in lower Manhattan told Carrollo.
“Embarrassed, ashamed”
Carroll acknowledged in the trial that lasted two weeks, in which Trump did not appear, that she felt “ashamed” by this attack that has prevented her from having a romantic relationship since then.
“It took me a long time to realize that staying silent doesn’t work.“, said.
Two other women, who said they were victims of Trump’s sexual assault, testified at the trial to show that the tycoon responded to a role model.
One of them, executive Jessica Leeds, said in court that Trump groped her on a business class domestic flight in the 1970s, while journalist Natasha Stoynoff claimed that the tycoon had kissed her without her consent during an interview in his Mar-a-Lago mansion in 2005.
About a dozen women accused Trump of sexual assault before the 2016 election in which he became president of the United States.
The Republican, who aspires to return to the White House in the 2024 elections, has always denied the accusations and until now had never been convicted by justice.
“Sick”
Trump did not testify during the trial nor did his defense call any witnesses, but in a video of the sworn statement he made to Carroll’s lawyer last October and shown to the jury, he calls the former journalist a “liar” and “sick”.
Trump’s lawyers maintained that the assault motivated by the “money, political reasons and status”.
Carroll relied on a law enacted in November in New York state that gave victims of time-barred sexual assaults a year to sue their alleged attackers.
He accused Trump of having it.”raped and groped by force” and defamation for comments that caused “reputational, emotional and professional damage”.
The former president has other open fronts in justice. Last month, he pleaded not guilty in a criminal case related to paying dirty money to buy the silence of a porn star just before the 2016 election.
He is also under investigation for his efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election in the state of Georgia, his alleged mishandling of classified documents removed from the White House, and his involvement in the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021.
Source: AFP
Source: Gestion
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