Trump attends hearing in New York court to appeal verdict in Carroll sexual abuse case

CNN
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Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll met in Lower Manhattan on Friday as the former president tries to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found he sexually assaulted and defamed the former columnist.

A nine-member jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after a two-week trial last year. Trump did not attend the hearing or call any witnesses, but both the former president and Carroll were in court for oral arguments on Friday.

The hearing ended around 10:30 a.m. ET. The court will not issue a ruling on Friday and is unlikely to make a decision before the November presidential election.

The trial took Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, back to a place he had become familiar with during his campaign – the corridors of a courthouse. Unlike the civil fraud trial in New York and the criminal hush-money trial – where Trump spoke in the hallways before cameras, claiming he had been wrongfully prosecuted and was using the opportunity to campaign – there are no cameras in the federal courthouse, although the media followed his motorcade.

Oral arguments in Friday's roughly 25-minute hearing focused on evidence admitted at trial that Trump's lawyers said was not properly presented to the jury.

Trump's lawyer John Sauer argued that this was a “typical 'he said, she said' case involving a plaintiff who has a political motive for telling a story. Carroll is being encouraged by Trump's political enemies, he said.

At that point, an appeals judge interrupted Sauer and instructed him to focus on the evidence on which the appeal is based.

Many of the arguments in the appeals hearing revolved around minor issues, including the admissibility of the testimony of Jessica Leeds, who testified during the trial that Trump groped her on an airplane in the 1970s.

“Back then, it was a crime to grope someone on an airplane, and today it's a crime to grope someone on an airplane,” said Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan.

The judges asked Kaplan to clarify how Leeds fits the pattern put forward by Carroll's lawyers and questioned whether Leeds' alleged attack on an aircraft in a public space fits the pattern that would make it admissible.

Referring to the infamous “Access Hollywood” video admitted at trial, Kaplan argued it would have been better to admit it as a confession – a reference to a ruling by the trial judge who denied Trump's request for a retrial, saying the video “could have been viewed by the jury as a kind of personal confession regarding his conduct.”

Kaplan pointed out during the hearing that Trump was in court on Friday but also had every chance to appear in court during the trial to testify in his own defense, which he did not do. She said the “Access Hollywood” tape and excerpts from Trump's testimony were appropriately admitted in court, especially since Trump's own testimony was missing.

“He had every opportunity to take the stand and refute all of that evidence. He didn't,” Kaplan said. “He didn't call a single witness in the civil case. We called 11 witnesses. But what we did present is the Access Hollywood videotape where he essentially says, 'I grab women's pussy without their consent,' and then in his deposition that I took and asked him about that video — what did he say? He accepted it, Your Honor.”

Trump did not appear at Carroll's first trial, which is the subject of Friday's appeal, but he attended most of Carroll's second trial earlier this year, which he also lost.

The 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial was the first of several cases against Trump and the first time he has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman. Carroll testified in detail that Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her in 2019 when he denied the attack, said she wasn't his type and suggested Carroll made up the story to sell copies of a new book. The jury reached the verdict within three hours of deliberation, finding that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll but that she had not proven that Trump raped her. Trump faces no prison time in the case.

The case is separate from a related defamation trial that took place earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding that Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll.

In their appeal of the 2023 ruling, Trump's lawyers argued that the judge erred in allowing the jury to hear testimony from two other women who claimed Trump sexually harassed them – one in the 1970s and another in 2005. They also argued that the judge should not have allowed Carroll's lawyers to play the explosive “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump is filmed on a hot mic describing how he gropes women. “I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait,” Trump says.

Trump's lawyers also said the judge “improperly limited” the former president's testimony by barring them from asking questions about billionaire Reid Hoffman, a Democrat who helped with Carroll's trial, and by rejecting arguments by his lawyers about Trump critic George Conway's conversations with Carroll before her lawsuit. They also said the judge acted improperly in preventing them from questioning Carroll about her testimony about Trump's DNA and the dress she kept from the department store encounter.

“The involvement of Conway and Hoffman was concrete evidence that the plaintiff and others had fabricated their claims for political reasons. In a trial that also included testimony about a flight in the late 1970s, there was no basis for concluding – and the district court made no explanation – that such evidence would have been unduly prejudicial,” Trump's lawyers wrote.

Carroll's lawyers argue that the judge's evidentiary decisions were correct. They argued that the judge acted correctly in allowing the two accusers to testify because Carroll had to prove that Trump had attacked her. Their testimony, Carroll's lawyers say, is proof of Trump's actions.

“As evidenced by her testimony, Trump repeatedly lunged at a woman in a semi-public location, pressed his body against her, kissed her, and sexually touched her without her consent. He later categorically denied the allegations and stated that the plaintiff was too unattractive for him to attack her,” Carroll's lawyers wrote.

“Trump cannot show an abuse of discretion in the district court's careful evidentiary decisions. And even if he could, Trump would not be entitled to a new trial given the overwhelming evidence supporting the verdict in Carroll's favor,” Carroll's lawyers wrote.

This story and headline have been updated due to further developments.