A lawyer for Donald Trump urged an appeals court to throw out a $5 million verdict finding Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, saying testimony from two other female accusers was improperly admitted at trial.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, left the campaign trail to attend Friday’s hearing before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the May 2023 civil jury verdict should stand.
Much of Friday’s arguments turned on whether the trial judge should have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who said the former U.S. president sexually mistreated them decades ago.
Trump’s lawyer John Sauer also objected to letting jurors see a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video where Trump boasted graphically about forcing himself on women.
“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible propensity evidence,” Sauer said.
Wearing a blue suit and red tie, Trump showed little emotion during the arguments, but shook his head when Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan accused him of a pattern of “chatting up” women before he “pounced” on them.
Friday’s panel of three judges, all appointed to the bench by Democratic presidents, did not say when it would rule.
TRUMP ATTACKS ‘RIDICULOUS CASE’
The verdict stemmed from Trump’s encounter around 1996 with Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and an October 2022 Truth Social post where he called Carroll’s claim a hoax.
Though jurors stopped short of finding that Trump raped Carroll, as she had claimed, they awarded the former Elle magazine advice columnist a respective $2.02 million and $2.98 million for sexual assault and defamation.
A different jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million for having defamed her and damaging her reputation in June 2019 after she first accused him of rape.
Trump, 78, has consistently denied wrongdoing.
In both denials underlying Carroll’s lawsuits, Trump said he didn’t know Carroll, that she was “not my type,” and that she made up her story to promote her memoir.
Speaking to reporters after oral arguments, Trump suggested without evidence that a decades-old photo of him and Carroll, in which he once mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples, may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
“It’s a ridiculous case,” Trump said. “It’s political interference, it’s a witch hunt.”
Trump is also appealing the $83.3 million verdict.
Carroll, 80, also attended Friday’s arguments, wearing a dark blazer and suit with a navy blue hair ribbon. She and her lawyers did not talk with reporters after arguments ended.
