A judge says former President Donald Trump's lawyers can't present legal arguments to a jury assessing damages at a defamation trial this month on a jury's conclusion that he didn't rape a columnist in the mid-1990s.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made the determination in an order in advance of a Jan. 16 trial to determine defamation damages against Trump after a jury concluded Trump sexually abused columnist E. Jean Carroll but did not find evidence was sufficient to conclude that he raped her.

Trump, speaking in Iowa on Saturday as the Republican frontrunning presidential candidate in advance of a Jan. 15 primary, criticized the judge as a “radical Democrat” and mocked E. Jean Carroll for not screaming when she was attacked. “It was all made up,” he said.

Carroll, 80, won a $5 million award last May from a jury that concluded Trump sexually abused her in 1996 in a luxury department store dressing room and defamed her in 2022.

  • azimir@lemmy.ml
    32·
    11 months ago

    Not exactly. It’s due to a wrinkle in New York law. Since she was unable to positively state that when he penetrated her it was with a finger or his penis, the jury could only find him responsible for sexual abuse. In most (if all) other states, it would have labeled rape, but NY has this odd category where it must be a penis to be rape. Since it is unknown what he raped her with, it’s officially sexual abuse.