After the former US president last week faced the prospect of a $370m fine and potential collapse of his real estate empire in New York state court, he will now contend with yet another costly legal battle in Manhattan: a defamation case brought by a woman who, according to a jury of her peers, was sexually abused by him.
On Tuesday, Trump will once again be on trial over the former Elle writer E Jean Carroll’s sexual assault claims against him – his second such proceeding in less than a year.
This trial – which comes as Trump also deals with a host of criminal cases against him – will play out at Manhattan federal court, just hundreds of feet away from the courthouse where the team of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, argued that he committed massive civil fraud.
Carroll has said that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room around late 1995; her statement was first published by New York magazine, from a portion of her then forthcoming book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.
Trump denied Carroll’s claims, saying: “I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.” He also heaped further insults on her and accused her of being part of a political conspiracy.
Carroll sued Trump in 2019 over these statements, saying that Trump’s denials damaged her reputation. At the time, Carroll could not sue Trump over her claim of sexual assault, as this was beyond the statute of limitations.
In 2022, however, New York state’s Adult Survivors Act – which, for a one-year period, permitted adult survivors of sexual misconduct to file civil suits against their alleged abusers – allowed Carroll to sue Trump again, this time over the claimed assault. That lawsuit, which also included defamation claims for statements Trump made after he was no longer president, went to trial in April 2023.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try to get my life back,” Carroll said in harrowing court testimony.
Carroll won that lawsuit: after just three hours of deliberations, jurors found Trump liable of sexual assault and defamation, awarding her $5m.
Trump’s upcoming trial will not relitigate Carroll’s claim of sexual assault. On 9 January, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump cannot deny the sexual assault, pointing to a jury’s previous finding.
“Consequently, the fact that Mr Trump sexually abused – indeed, raped – Ms Carroll has been conclusively established and is binding in this case,” Kaplan also said.
“Mr Trump is precluded from offering any testimony, evidence, or argument suggesting or implying that he did not sexually assault Ms Carroll, that she fabricated her account of the assault, or that she had any motive to do so.”
This ruling means that Trump cannot fight Carroll’s claims at this trial. Jurors are tasked with deciding onlythe financial penalties associated with his 2019 denial.
“It’s a question of damages, and it should move pretty quickly,” said Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said. “There’s no legal defense. There’s no factual defense that’s going to be presented.”
In another legal blow, Trump can’t block testimony from Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor. Humphreys’ testimony would put a dollar amount on the reputational harm Carroll endured as a result of Trump’s statements.
Humphreys testified in Carroll’s first trial against Trump, but her testimony in this trial is especially perilous to the former president. Humphreys testified in two Georgia ex-election workers’ defamation trial against Trump’s acolyte Rudy Giuliani.
The former election workers won $148.1m in the suit. Giuliani subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection.
For those familiar with high-profile defamation claims, Trump’s chances for success look dire given both who he is, and how he usually comports himself around his legal cases.
Rahmani said the outcome for Trump could vary wildly. Will jurors be upset about something else he did in relation to Carroll, for example? He noted that New York was a favorable venue for any court proceedings against Trump.
“Defamation is definitely a tough kind of case to pinpoint as to what a jury is going to do,” Rahmani said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the jurors return a seven- or even eight-figure verdict.”
One crisis PR expert who specializes in litigation, including defamation, pointed to Trump’s extreme disadvantage from being who he is.
“If it was literally anyone else, I think she would probably lose,” this expert said. “Because of the fact that it’s him, and I think the fact that he has a hard time being personable to people, in what otherwise would be a completely winning case for any other man in this situation, that burden that otherwise would be on E Jean Carroll is now on him to defend himself.
“He’s unlike any other client I could ever advise,” the expert said. And if Trump attends Carroll’s trial, as he has claimed he will, it could hurt him even more.
“I think his presence in the courtroom would probably hurt him because I think he has such a machismo aura about him, and he’ll be very stern the entire time,” the industry veteran said. “In any other situation, I would say E Jean Carroll would have a 2% success rate and in this case, Trump has a 2% success rate.”
Carroll’s team did not comment on the upcoming trial. A representative for Trump also did not immediately comment.
