After being found guilty of sexual abuse, Trump is choosing to appeal the verdict. What do you think? Please share in the comments.
From The Epoch Times. 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.
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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. …
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. …
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.” …
Carroll’s lawsuit traces back to 2019 when the writer accused then-President Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s. After Trump denied Carroll’s allegations in 2019—saying that “she’s not my type”—Carroll filed a lawsuit accusing Trump of defaming her in the same year, citing those words. That lawsuit bounced around state, federal, and appellate courts in New York and Washington, D.C., without material consequences. …
Trump has, until the present day, denied all of Carroll’s allegations.
“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace – a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the verdict came out on Tuesday. …
Legal Expert Weighs In
Alan Dershowitz, a professor who taught at Harvard Law School for 50 years, told The Epoch Times on May 8 that he believes that Carroll’s case fails based on procedural considerations alone.
“Those cases never should have been allowed to be brought,” Dershowitz told EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program in an interview, referring to the two cases Carroll brought against Trump.
“The historical purpose of a statute of limitations is to make sure you don’t have to stand trial for something that occurred 25 years ago—in this case, even more than that,” he explained. “How do you remember things? How do you know where you were? Maybe he was in Europe at the time. She hasn’t even given the dates and the times of the year.”
“It’s a case that normally would be thrown out—but again, it’s Donald Trump,” Dershowitz said. …
What do you think? Please share in the comments.
(Excerpt from The Epoch Times. Photo Credit: Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)