The jury found Trump was liable for defaming E. Jean Carroll in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations "a Hoax and a lie", awarding Carroll millions of dollars in damages. The Jury found that she was not raped but was sexually abused by Trump during the 1995/1996 Bergdorf Goodman incident. Trump's attorneys argued in their bid for a new trial.
In 2019, Carroll first publicly came forward saying Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s when the future president was just a businessman.
She made the allegations with the publication of her memoir What Do We Need Men For: A Modest Proposal. Trump responded, denying the accusation and saying that the writer had ulterior motives. Carroll sued Trump — twice (in 2019 and later in 2022) — for his public rebuke of her accusation.
The columnist filed the second lawsuit against Trump (this time for both defamation and rape) after the state of New York lifted the statute of limitations for survivors of sexual assault to file civil claims.
Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Trump's motion for a new trial, saying, "The jury in this case did not reach 'a seriously erroneous result.'"
"Its verdict is not 'a miscarriage of justice,'" the judge said in his ruling. "Now that the court has denied Trump's motion for a new trial or to decrease the amount of the verdict, E. Jean Carroll looks forward to receiving the $5 million in damages that the jury awarded her," Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement.
Kaplan also said in her statement that Carroll: "also looks forward to continuing to hold Trump accountable for what he did to her at the trial in Carroll I, which is scheduled to begin on January 15, 2024."