Former President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll over $83 million in damages for repeatedly defaming her, a jury found Friday.
The nine-person jury began deliberations inat 1:40 p.m. ET and reached a verdict in just under three hours.
The decision came after contentious closing arguments that saw Trump storm out of the courtroom. He returned for his own attorney’s closing arguments but left the courthouse at 4 p.m., before the jury returned its verdict.
Trump had already been found liable for defaming Carroll while he was president by mocking her allegation that he’d sexually abused her, so this jury was only tasked with determining how much she should be paid in damages.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan asked the jury for at least $24 million in compensatory damages for the harm she suffered and “lots and lots of money” in punitive damages to stop him from continuing to defame her.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba contended that Carroll “had failed to show she is entitled to any damages at all” because she “actively sought the comments and the attention” she received.
The trial started on Jan. 16, and Trump was the final witness in the case. He testified for under five minutes.
The verdict is the second for Carroll against Trump. A different jury last year found Trump liable for sexually abusing her in a New York City department store in the 1990s and for defaming her by mocking her claims after he left the White House. They awarded her $5 million in damages, a judgment Trump is appealing.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan found Trump liable for defamation in the current case based on that jury’s findings. That finding barred Trump from testifying that Carroll’s claim was made up, but Trump still managed to do so in his short testimony. “I consider it a false accusation,” he said.
