Trump's appeal in E. Jean Carroll case focuses on aircraft law

John Sauer, Trump's lawyer at Friday's hearings, said the jury should never have heard the testimony of Jessica Leeds, who testified that Trump groped her on an airplane in the 1970s.

When Trump met Leeds a few years later, he remembered her as “that cunt from the airplane,” Leeds testified.

Leeds' allegations were not part of Carroll's charges, but the trial judge allowed her testimony because they demonstrated a pattern of behavior by Trump, Carroll's lawyers argued.

But Sauer said the testimony should have been “inadmissible” because the alleged events were subject to “territorial or maritime jurisdiction” and different rules of evidence applied.

The three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel hearing the case seemed largely skeptical of the arguments.

US District Judge Denny Chin expressed skepticism as to whether it would make sense to “order a retrial” in light of the arguments.

“It is very difficult to overturn a jury verdict on evidentiary grounds,” he said.

Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said there was no “special jurisdiction over aircraft” that would have led to the exclusion of Leeds' testimony.

“Grobbing someone on an airplane was a crime,” she said. “Grobbing someone on an airplane is a crime.”

Trump did not appear at the trial

Trump skipped the trial in the case, which took place in spring 2023. The jury found him guilty of sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll and sentenced him to pay five million dollars in damages.

After his defeat in court, Trump attended almost the entire hearing of a second trial in January of this year, seeking additional damages for defamation.

His lead attorney in the January trial, Alina Habba, frequently clashed with the judge in the case. Trump himself stood up and left the courtroom in the middle of closing arguments by Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

In the second trial, the jury ordered the former president to pay Carroll an additional $83 million in damages because he repeatedly called her a liar and disparaged her appearance while denying sexual assault.

Carroll was present for all days of the hearing and also participated in the closing arguments on Friday. Kaplan declined to comment after the hearing.

The oral arguments on appeal took place in a courthouse across the street from the two trials in Carroll v. Trump.

Trump brought much of his extensive legal team with him on Friday. In addition to Sauer, who presented oral arguments, he had attorneys Todd Blanche, Emil Bove and Habba in tow. Two advisers, Boris Epshteyn and Joshua Katz, sat at the same large table in the courtroom.

Carroll filed her sexual abuse lawsuit against Trump under the Adult Survivor's Act, a New York state law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that creates an avenue for civil sexual misconduct claims that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.

Carroll claimed that Trump cornered her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan, a short walk from Trump Tower, in the mid-1990s. In harrowing testimony at both trials, she described how his “crooked finger” penetrated her without her consent. Two of Carroll's friends testified that she told her about it shortly after the incident.

Trump's lawyers argued that the verdict in the first trial should be overturned. In an appeal brief, lawyers Blanche and Bove – who also represent Trump in a number of other cases – used arguments from Harvey Weinstein's successful appeal in his New York criminal case. Weinstein also argued that accusers who were not part of the case should not have been allowed to testify.

Sauer argued that Trump's case was “a prime example” of a case falsely based on bias evidence rather than Trump's actual conduct.

“It's a typical case of 'he says, she says,'” he said.

The judges seemed unconvinced, with U.S. District Judge Susan Carney pondering whether the verdict could stand, given the “outcry witnesses” to whom Carroll had told her story.

Legal experts – including Weinstein's own lawyers – had previously told BI that the argument had little chance of success. Federal court rules are more lenient when it comes to the testimony of “inclination witnesses” who help establish a pattern of behavior, especially in civil cases.

“There is certainly a pattern to these civil cases, and that is essentially what happens, particularly when there is an offender with multiple alleged victims,” ​​Marci Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped draft the Adult Survivors Act, told BI ahead of Friday's closing arguments.

On Friday, Kaplan stressed that the usual rules were followed during the trial

“Despite the importance of this case and the personalities involved, this is actually a routine application of federal rules of evidence,” she said.

She also criticized Habba's earlier claims that there might be a conflict of interest between her and the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

“Just to clarify, we are not related and he is not my mentor,” she said.

Trump is trying hard to resolve many of his legal problems before the presidential election in November, in which he will run against Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Earlier this year, Sauer won a resounding victory in one of Trump's criminal cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court granted the president broad immunity, dealing a significant setback to the Washington, DC-based criminal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump did not appear at those oral arguments either, in part because he was in another Manhattan courtroom where a separate criminal case was being tried, where a jury found him guilty of falsifying business documents in 2016 as part of a separate election interference scheme.

Blanche and Bove, who are representing part of his team in the Manhattan criminal trial, have cited the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to challenge the verdict in that case as well. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, is expected to decide Friday whether to again delay Trump's sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 18.

Presidential immunity played a role in previous court battles in the Carroll case. A panel of the Second Circuit had previously ruled that Trump waived any presidential immunity and could not argue that it applied when he denigrated Carroll from the White House.

In an interview with BI after the verdict in her first trial last year, Carroll said she had heard from hundreds of readers that her verdicts had given them the confidence to hold their own tormentors accountable.

“They think, 'If the former president of the United States can be held accountable for sexual abuse, then maybe I can hold my stepfather, maybe my old boss, maybe my ex-boyfriend, maybe the guy who lives down the street accountable for ruining my life,'” Carroll told BI.