Joseph Tacopina, attorney of former President Donald Trump, told The Epoch Times that the former president is planning to appeal the verdict that found him liable for battery and defamation charges in the E. Jean Carroll trial.
It came as a Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday ruled against former President Donald Trump on one count of defamation and one count of battery in a civil case launched against him by Carroll, an advice columnist.
The verdict will not result in jail time because it is a civil case. The jury found that Trump should pay a total of about $5 million in damages to Carroll, including about $3 million for the defamation charge and about $2 million for the civil battery charge.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee who oversaw the trial, announced the verdict after a 9-member jury panel deliberated on the case’s merit for less than three hours.
It concluded a one-week-long civil trial in the Southern District Court of New York, in which Carroll, 79, claims Trump, 76, raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996—committing a battery offense—and, in his denial of the incident, committed libel, a type of defamation in written words.
Trump’s denial of the incident, Carroll’s attorney alleged during the trial, hurt Carroll’s career prospects as a journalist and a writer.
Because the case was brought in civil court, Carroll was required to establish her battery claim by “a preponderance of the evidence”—a legal standard meaning more likely than not—and establish “clear and convincing evidence” for her libel claim. Both standards here are lower than the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement to establish a guilty verdict in criminal cases.
Jurors were tasked with deciding whether Trump raped, sexually abused, or forcibly touched Carroll, any one of which would satisfy her claim of battery. They found that Carroll did not prove that Trump raped her but instead found that Trump sexually abused her. They also found that Trump defamed Carroll.
“Strange verdict,” Tacopina told reporters outside the courthouse. “It was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that.”
“We’ll obviously be appealing those other findings,” Tacopina said, referring to the defamation and battery counts.
By Gary Bai
