A Manhattan jury rejected a claim that former President Donald Trump raped author E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. But the jury found that he is liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Carroll, 79, accused Trump of raping her in a locked dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman in NYC in 1993. However, Trump has insisted he never met Carroll and he doesn’t know her.
The 9-member jury rejected Carroll’s claim of rape. However, the jury found that Trump, 76, was liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defamed her by publicly denying her allegations.
The jury also determined that Trump lied when he claimed he had never met Carroll and accusing her of making up the story for political reasons and to help promote her book.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, according to reports.
Trump’s legal team plans to appeal the verdict.
In 2019, The NY Post deleted an article about the allegations after Carroll sat for a bizarre interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in which she called rape “sexy.”
“I’m not the victim,” she told Cooper. “I was not thrown on the ground and ravished. The word rape carries so many sexual connotations. This was not, this was not sexual,” she added. “It just, it hurt…”
Anderson replied: “But I think most people think of rape as a violent assault. It is not a sexual…”
Carroll cut Cooper off and said, “I think most people think of rape as being sexy. Think of the fantasies.”
Following the interview, The NY Post deleted an article about Carroll and ordered staff writers to stop publishing articles about the allegations.
CNN later deleted the segment from Cooper’s interview, but the segment was uploaded to YouTube by a user who wrote: “CNN tried deleting, but not before I saved and uploaded it!”
Watch the video below.
