The New York jury, after deliberating only briefly, has awarded Jean Carroll $5 million in her sexual assault/defamation case against Donald Trump. CNBC describes the verdict:
A federal jury in New York on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and forcibly touching the writer E. Jean Carroll at a department store in the 1990s, and of defaming her last fall when he accused her of making up that account.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
The verdict in the civil trial came after less than three hours of deliberations in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan. The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, as Carroll had alleged.
I haven’t actually seen the verdict form, but it is not obvious why the jury would believe Carroll as to Trump’s “abusing and forcibly touching” her, but disbelieve her claim that he raped her. Perhaps the latter was simply a bridge too far in a crowded department store.
Carroll’s entire 27-year-old story was implausible, in my opinion. But a verdict in her favor was almost a foregone conclusion, given that Trump did not appear to testify on his own behalf. His deposition was taken during the case’s discovery phase, and some or all of it was played for the jury. I can only assume that Trump expected he would lose whether he testified or not, so he was better served, politically, to shun the proceeding and implicitly decline to accept its authority.
Will the verdict have any political impact? Some, I think. A jury finding is relatively credible, compared with merely being smeared by the press. And in many eyes, Trump’s checkered history will make plausible the jury’s finding that he sexually “abused” Carroll. The lawsuit was, in fact, a put-up job, encouraged and financed by anti-Trump activists. Nevertheless, the jury at least partially believed Jean Carroll, and that fact adds, not insignificantly, to the baggage that Trump carries as he seeks his party’s presidential nomination.
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