A federal judge on Wednesday granted writer E. Jean Carroll a partial summary judgement in her lawsuit against Donald Trump, ruling that the former president is liable for defamatory statements he made about her in 2019, when she went public with claims he had raped her.
In his 25 page ruling, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the upcoming trial for the lawsuit will only address the question of how much damages Trump should pay Carroll for defaming her, CNBC reported.
Kaplan agreed with Carroll’s attorneys that the jury’s verdict in a related lawsuit earlier this year — which found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the mid-1990s and defamed her in comments he made last fall — had already settled the legal questions.
“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.
“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,” the judge wrote.
In May, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages for the comments he made in 2022. Trump is appealing the verdict and the damages in that case. His lawyer, Alina Habba, said she was “very confident” the “verdict will be overturned on appeal which will render this decision moot.”
She said she is certain the appeals court will block the trial on the current lawsuit, which is scheduled to begin January 15, based on “the meritorious defenses that have been raised by” the ex-president.
Trump claimed that Carroll defamed him when she said he raped her. The jury was unable to find Trump liable for rape because Carroll said she could not be certain that it was the former president’s penis that penetrated her.
Kaplan had ruled earlier that the jury’s actual ruling, that Trump had “deliberately and forcibly” penetrated Carroll, was consistent with the common understanding of rape even though it did not meet the technical definition of New York law.
In July, the Department of Justice dropped its efforts to shield Trump from liability, ending its contention that Trump was acting within the scope of his office as president when he defamed Carroll because the statements did not serve the government.
Carroll also amended the lawsuit last month, noting the defamatory statments continued after he lost the 2020 election and Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
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[Featured image: Donald Trump/Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and E. Jean Carroll arrives at Manhattan federal court in May (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)]
