Trump asks for fresh trial in E Jean Carroll sex abuse case

Donald Trump has requested a new trial in the sexual assault civil case brought by E Jean Carroll, according to a new court filing.

A Manhattan jury last month found the former US president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5m in damages. 

Mr Trump failed to appear at the trial, which heard graphic testimony from the former Elle advice columnist about how she was sexually assaulted at the luxury Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.

After two weeks of evidence, a Manhattan jury took just over two and a half hours to find Mr Trump liable for the attack and for defaming Ms Carroll by angrily calling the claims a “hoax”.

In a new filing on Thursday, Mr Trump’s lawyers claimed the jury’s $2m award for the sexual abuse part of the verdict was “excessive” because the jury found that Ms Carroll had not been raped.

They further alleged that Ms Carroll had stated that she did not suffer any mental injury from the assault, a claim disputed at trial by an expert psychiatrist.

Mr Trump’s legal team also said the $2.7m award for defamation was “based upon pure speculation.”

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Ms Carroll, 79, first revealed details of the sexual assault in a book excerpt that ran in New York magazine in June 2019.

When Mr Trump denied the claims and attacked her personally, she sued him for defamation.

Then in 2022, Ms Carroll sued the former president for sexual assault after New York passed a law allowing survivors a one-year window to hold their abusers accountable regardless of when the assault took place.

During three days of testimony last month, Ms Carroll told the jury that she and Mr Trump had engaged in playful banter after a chance encounter at Bergdorf Goodman one evening in the mid-1990s.

After taking an escalator up to a deserted 6th floor to look for lingerie, Mr Trump led her to a dressing room, pushed her up against a wall and sexually assaulted her, she said.

“It was extremely painful,” Ms Carroll told the jury. “He put his hand inside me and curled his finger. As I sit here today, I can still feel it.”

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Mr Trump declined to testify in his own defence. In a videotaped deposition played to the jury, he confused Ms Carroll with his second wife Marla Maples, and made disparaging remarks to the defence attorney Roberta Kaplan.

Mr Trump’s “grab em by the p***y” comments in the Access Hollywood tape played in court amounted to a “confession”, Ms Kaplan told jurors in closing statements.

The jury heard also heard testimony from Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who had previously accused Mr Trump of sexual assault.

After Mr Trump again defamed Ms Carroll at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire last month, Ms Kaplan asked to amend her remaining defamation lawsuit against the ex-president to include the smears.