Donald Trump fails in appeal against sexual violence verdict

A few weeks before Donald Trump took office as US President, an appeals court confirmed his fine for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump did not substantiate his accusation that there were procedural errors in the lower court, the three-judge panel of the responsible federal appeals court ruled on Monday.

Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung sharply criticized the court decision. “The American people re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate,” he said. Citizens demanded “an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift rejection of all witch hunts, including the Democratic-sponsored Carroll hoax, which remains under appeal.”

A New York jury convicted Trump last year after a nine-day civil trial of sexually assaulting Carroll in a Manhattan department store in 1996. Trump was ordered to pay the former columnist for the women’s magazine “Elle” $2 million (1.92 million euros) for the sexual assault and another $3 million for defamation.

Trump denied the allegations and appealed after his conviction. He argued that two women who also said they were victims of Trump’s sexual assault should not have been heard as witnesses in the civil case.

Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a dressing room at the New York luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in 1996. The long-time columnist for Elle magazine first made her accusation public in 2019, when Trump was president. The Republican then accused Carroll of lying and said she wasn’t his “type.” In the years that followed, the Republican repeatedly accused the journalist of making up the sexual attack. He also called Carroll a “crazy.”

In another defamation trial, the jury in January ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million. The former and future US president has also appealed against this verdict.

The legal battle with Carroll isn’t Trump’s only legal trouble. However, two federal judicial proceedings against Trump for election manipulation and for storing secret government documents in his private residence Mar-a-Lago were dropped after Trump’s victory in the presidential election on November 5th. As justification, special investigator Jack Smith referred to the US federal judiciary’s practice since the Watergate scandal of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Separately, Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Trump is the first politician in US history to enter the White House as a convicted criminal. In mid-December, the judge responsible refused to stop the proceedings, but postponed the announcement of the sentence indefinitely.