Donald Trump was ordered Friday to pay a whopping $83 million in damages for defaming E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist a prior jury has found that Trump sexually assaulted inside a department store fitting room.
The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering.
The verdict, handed down by a separate jury of five men and four women in Manhattan federal court, includes $65 million in damages meant to punish the billionaire ex-president, 77, for acting “out of hatred, ill will, or spite” by claiming to have “never met” Carroll — even after jurors last May found him liable for abusing the writer inside a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman.
“This case is about getting him to stop, once and for all,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan had told jurors in closing arguments Friday morning.
Trump was also ordered to pay $11 million toward Carroll rebuilding her reputation after Trump claimed in June 2019 — within hours of Carroll going public with her allegations — that the “Ask E Jean” columnist was a “whack job” who should “pay dearly” for accusing him.
The ex-president, who is expected to appeal the verdict, must also pay $7.3 million to compensate Carroll for the pain and suffering she has dealt with after receiving a deluge of death threats in the wake of Trump’s rebukes, the jury found after deliberating for just under three hours.
Trump, who was present inside the Manhattan courthouse for closing statements earlier Friday, left the courthouse before the verdict was read. He was not in the room when the award was announced.
The verdict comes after jurors heard five days of testimony — including a blink-if-you-miss-it stint on the stand from Trump himself.
He testified for less than three minutes after Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered that he be kept on a tight leash, stopping him — in light of last year’s verdict — from claiming not to have sexually assaulted Carroll.
Jurors in last year’s verdict found that Trump “forcibly and without consent” penetrated Carroll using his fingers, court records show.
Judge Kaplan — no relation to Carroll’s attorney — already found Trump liable for defaming Carroll in the current case before the trial began earlier this month, leaving jurors to only decide how much damages, if any, Trump must pay.
Carroll took the stand and told jurors that Trump’s statements destroyed her reputation as a respected journalist and “ended the world” she lived in.
“Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and a whack job,” she said.
The trial was marked by several outbursts from Trump, including on Friday, when he stormed out of the courtroom during Carroll’s lawyer’s closing statement, before returning when it was time for his lawyer to speak.
The Republican presidential candidate was also ripped for providing running commentary to his team during the proceedings — including grousing within earshot of the jurors that Carroll’s testimony was “false.”
After Judge Kaplan warned to boot him from the courtroom for future interruptions, Trump responded that we “would love it” if he was removed.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that he should not be blamed for the online attacks on Carroll because he did not “direct” the online trolls to go after her.
“He did not condone them, he did not direct them, he just told his truth,” the ex-president’s personal attorney Alina Habba said during Friday’s closing statements.
But Trump’s “truth” is a “lie,” Carroll lawyer Shawn Crowley argued in some of the final words jurors heard before beginning their deliberations.
“That may be how Donald Trump lives his life, but that’s not how it works in a court of law,” Crowley added.
Habba also claimed that Carroll was enjoying her newfound spotlight as a result of coming forward with her allegations — but Carroll maintained on the stand that she was bringing the current case to “get my reputation back.”
Crowley also ripped Trump for thinking “rules don’t apply to him” — including those about how defendants are supposed to act in court.
“He gets to do whatever he wants. He gets to ignore a jury verdict,” Crowley said. “You saw how he behaved during this trial. You saw him walk out of the courtroom.”
Trump has also continued to rip Carroll on his Truth Social account throughout the trial and as recently as Friday afternoon.
“He gets to use his massive platform to keep ruining her life,” Crowley said.
“Make him pay enough so that he will stop.”
A nine-person jury found that Trump “forcibly and without consent” penetrated Carroll using his fingers, according to a ruling by Judge Kaplan earlier this month.
Trump was cleared of a rape claim in a civil case after the jury was “unconvinced” that Trump penetrated Carroll using his penis, Kaplan wrote.
Still, Carroll’s claim that Trump “raped” her is also “substantially true” in the sense of how people think about rape today, the judge wrote.
The verdict is just the latest in a series of legal woes for Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to 91 felony criminal counts across four states.
Trump is also facing the prospect of a $370 million penalty and an order banishing him from doing business in New York depending how a separate state judge rules in a civil fraud trial decision expected by the end of January.