by Madeleine Hubbard
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of E. Jean Carroll in her second defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, stating that a trial is only necessary to determine the amount of damages that Trump needs to pay the author.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of New York ruled that Trump defamed Carroll in June 2019 when he made false statements with actual malice after she accused Trump of sexual assault years earlier, The Hill reported.
Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, oversaw Carroll’s first lawsuit that resulted in a jury finding Trump liable for battery and defamation, and he said that the jury’s verdict in the case in May is the controlling factor for the latest lawsuit.
“[T]he jury found that Mr. Trump knew that his statement that Ms. Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior purposes was false or that he acted with reckless disregard to whether it was false,” Kaplan wrote Wednesday. “Whether Mr. Trump made the 2019 statements with actual malice raises the same issue.”
A trial in the case is set to start in New York on Jan. 15, the same day the first Republican nominating process is set to start in Iowa.
In the May trial, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages for defamation and battery.
Trump had tried unsuccessfully to delay the second defamation lawsuit.
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Madeleine Hubbard joined Just the News as a fast file reporter after working as an editor at Breitbart News.
Photo “E Jean Carroll” by julieannesmo. CC BY-SA 2.5.
