A federal appeals court has upheld the $83.3 million defamation verdict against Donald Trump, rejecting his attempts to overturn the massive judgment awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll. This isn’t the first time he’s been on the wrong side of a ruling in this ongoing legal saga; a separate appeals court also upheld a previous $5 million verdict against him in a related case.
This latest decision from the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit is a major legal defeat, and it looks like his attempts to use claims of presidential immunity to get out of it have failed. The core of the case goes back to E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store in 1996. After she went public with her story, Trump repeatedly denied her claims and said she was lying for political or personal reasons, like to sell her book.
