A federal jury in Manhattan on Friday ordered disgraced former President Trump to pay $83.3 million in punitive and compensatory damages to rape victim EJ Carroll in the second and final of two trials in a drama that began in the dressing room of a New York City department store circa 1995, picked up again when Carroll first went public with her story of the assault in 2019 and then later that year filed a defamation lawsuit, which dragged on for years in all sorts of different court motions and even the fucking Department of Justice at one point stepped in to defend Trump before he lost the 2020 election and the Biden Administration pulled out of the case, Politico’s Erica Orden reports.
The first trial last year took place in federal court but was conducted under New York State law – specifically one that allowed victims to file claims expired by the statute of limitations – and ended with that jury finding that Trump had defamed Carroll and sexually abused her, dinging the fat fuck for $5 million. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over both trials, later ruled that Trump had indeed raped Carroll and then prior to the second trial found a default judgment for the plaintiff, setting this now-concluded second trial as one strictly to determine damages. They determined quite a lot.
With that cursory summary out of the way, there are two moments in the saga that stick out:
“I’ve never met her, I understand what the president said, so I know nothing more about the situation. The president said this is not true,” said then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to reporters. “Yes, I believe the president,” McCarthy then added when a reporter asked if he believed Trump’s denials. McCarthy never elaborated on what detail specifically he believed Trump about, whether it was denying that he ever met her or how Trump changed his story to that Carroll wasn’t his “type” when confronted with a photo of them together. During a 2022 deposition in the case, Trump was shown a photo of Carroll in the 1990s and was asked if he recognized her.
“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” Trump said, referring to his second ex-wife Marla Maples.