During the early stages of a second federal trial this week covering allegations against Donald Trump originating with writer E. Jean Carroll, presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan told prospective jurors that the conclusion that Trump committed sexual assault is already established.
The jury at the first trial, which gave the foundation for what Kaplan was saying, didn’t hold Trump liable for “rape” as defined under relevant law, but the idea is that their other findings nonetheless established a holding that Trump committed sexual assault, with the conclusion on the “rape” question representative more of falling short of the letter of New York-specific definitions. Kaplan’s latest remarks on the issue were shared on X (formerly Twitter) by journalist Erica Orden with POLITICO.
“It has been determined already that Mr. Trump did sexually assault Ms. Carroll, that he knew when he made the statements about Ms. Carroll that the statements were false, that he made them with reckless disregard to whether they were true or false,” Kaplan said. The trial is meant only to cover the question of financial damages around a second set of defamation allegations from Carroll, which relate to Trump’s antagonistic responses to Carroll’s original account of Trump assaulting her.
Trump was in attendance in court on Tuesday. He did not attend the first trial on Carroll’s claims, which was held before the same judge, who carried over the first jury’s conclusions on earlier defamation allegations to the allegations currently in question. A $5 million penalty on Trump also already arose from the first jury trial.
Kaplan blocked arguments relating to the earlier jury’s conclusions on the “rape” question in a formal order before this trial. Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, subsequently raised concerns that Trump’s team would nonetheless try to effectively get around this order and raise substantially similar arguments questioning Carroll’s underlying motives. “Defendant’s effort to transform his prior argument about Plaintiff’s financial motive to fabricate an assault… into a supposedly new argument about Plaintiff’s motivation for publicity lacks merit,” Carroll’s lawyer said.
