Presidential immunity doesn’t shield Donald Trump from having to pay tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in damages after being held chargeable for defaming journal columnist E. Jean Carroll, a lawyer for Carroll instructed a federal appeals court docket in a submitting Monday.
After being awarded an $83.3 million defamation judgment from a jury final yr, Carroll on Monday urged the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Second Circuit to uphold the judgment towards Trump, after Trump requested the court docket to toss out the decision as a result of he had immunity as president.
“Dissatisfied with the result of the judicial course of, Trump now asks this Courtroom to put aside that jury verdict on the idea that he was really immune from judicial assessment all alongside,” Carroll’s legal professional Roberta Kaplan wrote within the submitting.
In 2023, a jury held Trump chargeable for sexually abusing Carroll in a dressing room of a Manhattan division retailer within the Nineteen Nineties, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages. A yr later, a distinct jury in a separate trial ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83 million in damages for defaming her in a 2022 social media put up through which he referred to as her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and stated “This girl will not be my kind!”
A federal appeals court docket upheld the $5 million judgment in December, and Trump’s attraction of the $83 million judgement is ongoing.
In September, Trump legal professional D. John Sauer — who Trump nominated in November to function the brand new solicitor basic — instructed a federal appeals court docket that the $83 million judgment ought to be thrown out based mostly on a flawed jury instruction, a sequence of “extremely prejudicial errors” through the trial, and since presidential immunity protects Trump from legal responsibility for public statements made as president.
“Presidential immunity forecloses any legal responsibility right here and requires the entire dismissal of all claims,” Sauer wrote.
Donald Trump participates in a city corridor introduced by Spanish-language community Univision, in Doral, Florida, October 16, 2024.
Marco Bello/Reuters
In her reply transient filed Monday, Kaplan pushed again towards Trump’s assertion of immunity, arguing that statements Trump made about Carroll as president would clearly fall exterior of his official tasks.
“If there have been ever a case the place immunity doesn’t protect a President’s speech, this one is it,” Kaplan wrote. “Donald Trump was not talking right here a couple of governmental coverage or a operate of his tasks as President. He was defaming Carroll due to her revelation that a few years earlier than he assumed workplace, he sexually assaulted her.”
Carroll’s legal professional argued that the $83 million judgement was justified to discourage Trump from additional defamatory statements, a danger that Kaplan stated the jury noticed firsthand. Trump attended most days of the 2024 trial, criticizing Carroll as a liar from his seat within the courtroom and sparring with the choose who oversaw the case.
“All through the trial, the jury had a front-row seat to Trump’s relentless marketing campaign of malice, together with his repeated defamation of Carroll at press conferences he held and in statements he posted on social media whereas the trial was ongoing,” Kaplan wrote.