Trump found guilty of abusing writer who is awarded $5mn in damages

Donald Trump sexually abused magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her by branding her a liar, jurors decided yesterday, dealing the former US president a legal setback as he campaigns to retake office in 2024.The nine-member jury in Manhattan federal court awarded about $5mn in compensatory and punitive damages.The jury deliberated for just under three hours. It rejected Trump’s denial that he assaulted Carroll and ruled in her favour. To find him liable, the jury of six men and three women was required to reach a unanimous verdict.Carroll, 79, testified during the civil trial that Trump, 76, raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in either 1995 or 1996, then harmed her reputation by writing in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform that her claims were a "complete con job,” "a hoax” and "a lie.”President from 2017 to 2021, Trump is the front-runner in opinion polls for the Republican presidential nomination and has shown an uncanny ability to weather controversies that might sink other politicians.It seems unlikely in America’s polarised political climate that the civil verdict will have an impact on Trump’s core supporters, who view his legal woes as part of a concerted effort by opponents to undermine him."The folks that are anti-Trump are going to remain that way, the core pro-Trump voters are not going to change, and the ambivalent ones I just don’t think are going to be moved by this type of thing,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.Any negative impact is likely to be small and limited to suburban women and moderate Republicans, he said.Jurors were tasked with deciding whether Trump raped, sexually abused or forcibly touched Carroll, any one of which would satisfy her claim of battery. They were separately asked if Trump defamed Carroll.Because this was a civil case, Trump faces no criminal consequences. Carroll was seeking unspecified monetary damages.Trump’s legal team opted not to present a defence, gambling that jurors would find that Carroll had failed to make a persuasive case.Trump had said Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist and a registered Democrat, made up the allegations to try to increase sales of her 2019 memoir and to hurt him politically.Because the case was in civil court, Carroll was required to establish her rape claim by "a preponderance of the evidence” — meaning more likely than not — rather than the higher standard used in criminal cases of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Carroll had to show "clear and convincing evidence” to prove her defamation claim.The trial featured testimony from two women who said Trump sexually assaulted them decades ago.Former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff told jurors that Trump cornered her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2005 and forcibly kissed her for a "few minutes” until a butler interrupted the alleged assault. Another woman, Jessica Leeds, testified that Trump behaved indecently with her on a flight in 1979.