A federal judge handed Donald Trump a significant loss in court, saying the twice-impeached four times indicted President is liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he raped her decades earlier.
This is a partial victory for Carroll, with the judge ruling a trial is needed only to determine how much Trump must pay her in damages. That's unusual since a jury usually determines at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff.
The Hill reports:
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled Trump acted with actual malice in making a series of false statements about Carroll in June 2019 when she came forward with accusations that Trump sexually assaulted her years earlier.
Kaplan ruled that a jury's May verdict in Carroll's other lawsuit against Trump, which found him liable for the assault itself and defaming Carroll last fall, is controlling in the case.
"[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 said. "Whether Mr. Trump made the 2019 statements with actual malice raises the same issue."
I'm sure there is a lot of ketchupping going on at Mar-a-Lago as the trial is set to begin on Jan. 15, the same day as the Iowa Republican caucus.
