Trump in court as lawyers fight to overturn verdict in E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse trial

NEW YORK (AP) — From the election campaign to the court, Donald Trump watched on Friday as one of his lawyers fought to overturn a verdict that found the former president guilty of sexual abuse and defamation.

The Republican candidate and prosecutor E. Jean Carrolla writer, were seated at tables about 15 feet apart in a federal appeals court. He didn't acknowledge her or look at her as he walked right past her on the way in and out, but he shook his head at points, such as when Carroll's lawyer said he had sexually assaulted her.

Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, told the judges of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the civil case in Carroll's lawsuit was marred by insufficient evidence.

“This case is a prime example of how implausible allegations are supported by highly inflammatory and inadmissible evidence,” Sauer said, noting that the jury was also allowed to consider such items as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted years ago about grabbing women's genitals.

Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the evidence in question was proper and that there was ample evidence in the nearly two-week trial to support Carroll's claim that Trump assaulted her in the dressing room of a luxury department store decades ago.

“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in 1996 and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.

Trump left the courtroom in a motorcade without commenting. Carroll declined to comment.

The three-judge court is unlikely to rule before the presidential election in November.

A jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He denies this. This jury Carroll received $5 million.

Trump's lawyers say the jury's verdict should be overturned because the trial admitted evidence that should have been excluded and because other evidence that should have been admitted was not admitted.

Trump did not attend the 2023 trial and expressed regret about it.

The civil case has both political and financial implications for Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, has sharply attacked Trump over the jury's verdict and repeatedly pointed out that he was found guilty of sexual assault.

And in January last year a second jury was Carroll received an additional $83.3 million for damages for comments Trump made about her during his presidency, finding them defamatory. The jury had been instructed by the judge that it had to accept the first jury's finding that Trump had sexually harassed Carroll.

The second trial focused primarily on determining the extent to which Carroll had been harmed by Trump's comments and how severely he should be punished.

Trump, 77, testified for less than three minutes in the second trial and was not allowed to refute the jury’s conclusions from May 2023. Nevertheless, he was animated in the courtroom Throughout the two-week trial, jurors could hear him grumbling about the case.

The appeal against the outcome of this trial, which Trump immediately afterwards described as “absolutely ridiculous!”, will be heard by the appeals court at a later date.

Carroll, 80, testified in both trials that her life as a columnist for Elle magazine had been ruined by Trump's public comments, which had sparked such hatred against her that she had received death threats and was afraid to leave the cabin in upstate New York where she lives.

Trump's lawyers said in court filings that he deserves a retrial in part because trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan allowed two other women to testify about similar instances of sexual abuse they say Trump committed against them in the 1970s and 2005. Trump denies those allegations.

They also argued that Kaplan wrongly excluded evidence that Carroll lied during her testimony, as well as other evidence that they said would reveal bias and motives for Carroll and other witnesses to lie against Trump. The ruling, they wrote, was “unjust and flawed” and resulted from “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary decisions.”

The judge is not related to Carroll's lawyer.

Trump insisted that Carroll made up the story about the attack to sell a new book and denied knowing her.

Trump's lawyers also objected to the repeated airing of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video during the trial. In it, Trump can be heard saying that sometimes he just starts kissing beautiful women and “when you're a star, they let you do it.” He also said that a star can touch women's genitals because “you can do anything.”

In their written arguments, Carroll's lawyers said Trump was wrongly demanding “a rehearing” based on unsubstantiated “blanket complaints of unfairness” and other “distortions of the record, misrepresentations or misapplications of the law, and a persistent disregard for the district court's reasoning.”

“There was no error here, let alone a violation of Trump's essential rights. This court should affirm that,” Carroll's lawyers said.

The Associated Press does not identify people who report sexual abuse unless they speak out publicly, as Carroll did.

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Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.