Jury orders Trump to pay Carroll damages for defamation. Here’s the latest.
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Former President Donald J. Trump was ordered by a Manhattan jury on Friday to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape, attacks he continued in social media posts, at news conferences and even in the midst of the trial itself.
The award included $65 million in punitive damages, which the nine-member jury assessed after finding Mr. Trump, 77, had acted maliciously. Ms. Carroll’s lawyers pointed to Mr. Trump’s persisting attacks on her, both from the White House and after leaving office.
On a single day recently, Mr. Trump made more than 40 derisive posts about her on his Truth Social website.
Ms. Carroll, 80, testified that his repeated taunts and lashing out had mobilized many of his supporters, leading to an onslaught of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that frightened her and “shattered” her reputation as a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine. “I was attacked on Twitter,” Ms. Carroll told the jury. “I was attacked on Facebook. I was living in a new universe.”
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