Trump expected to appear in person to appeal verdict in Carroll sex abuse trial

CNN
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Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll are meeting in Lower Manhattan on Friday as the former president tries to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found that he sexually abused and defamed the former columnist.

A nine-person jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after a two-week trial last year. Trump did not attend the hearing or call witnesses, but people familiar with his plans say he is expected to attend oral arguments in person on Friday. Carroll is also expected to attend. The court will not make a decision on Friday and one is unlikely before the presidential election in November.

The trial, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET, takes Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, back to a place he was familiar with during his campaign – the corridors of a courthouse. Unlike the New York civil fraud trial and the criminal hush-money trial – where Trump spoke in front of cameras in the hallways, claiming he was wrongfully persecuted and used the opportunity to campaign – there are no cameras inside the federal courthouse, although media will follow his motorcade outside.

The 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial was the first of several cases against Trump and the first time he has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman. Carroll testified in detail that Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her in 2019 when he denied the attack, said she wasn't his type and suggested Carroll made up the story to sell copies of a new book. The jury reached the verdict within three hours of deliberation, finding that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll but that she had not proven that Trump raped her. Trump faces no prison time in the case.

The case is separate from a related defamation trial that took place earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding that Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll.

In their appeal of the 2023 ruling, Trump's lawyers argued that the judge erred in allowing the jury to hear testimony from two other women who claimed Trump sexually harassed them – one in the 1970s and another in 2005. They also argued that the judge should not have allowed Carroll's lawyers to play the explosive “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump is filmed on a hot mic describing how he gropes women. “I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait,” Trump says.

Trump's lawyers also said the judge “inappropriately limited” the former president's testimony by barring them from asking questions about billionaire Reid Hoffman, a Democrat who helped with Carroll's trial, and by rejecting arguments by his lawyers about Trump critic George Conway's conversations with Carroll before her lawsuit. They also said the judge acted improperly in preventing them from questioning Carroll about her statements about Trump's DNA and the dress she kept from the department store encounter.

“The involvement of Conway and Hoffman was concrete evidence that the plaintiff and others had fabricated their claims for political reasons. In a trial that also included testimony about a flight in the late 1970s, there was no basis for concluding – and the district court made no explanation – that such evidence would have been unduly prejudicial,” Trump's lawyers wrote.

Carroll's lawyers argue that the judge's evidentiary decisions were correct. They argued that the judge acted correctly in allowing the two accusers to testify because Carroll had to prove that Trump had attacked her. Their testimony, Carroll's lawyers say, is proof of Trump's actions.

“As evidenced by her testimony, Trump repeatedly lunged at a woman in a semi-public location, pressed his body against her, kissed her, and sexually touched her without her consent. He later categorically denied the allegations and stated that the plaintiff was too unattractive for him to attack her,” Carroll's lawyers wrote.

“Trump cannot show an abuse of discretion in the district court's careful evidentiary decisions. And even if he could, Trump would not be entitled to a new trial given the overwhelming evidence supporting the verdict in Carroll's favor,” Carroll's lawyers wrote.