President-elect Donald Trump has resolved the criminal prosecution judicial risk but failed to overturn the civil lawsuit outcome. He acknowledged the sexual assault of former fashion columnist E. Jean Carroll and requested a retrial, claiming the ruling ordering him to pay $5 million (approximately 7.36 billion KRW) in damages was incorrect, but the court rejected the request.
According to the AP News and others on the 30th (local time), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, New York, ruled that the retrial request filed by President-elect Trump, claiming the first trial of Carroll’s sexual assault damages lawsuit was flawed, did not constitute grounds for a retrial.
Carroll filed a damages lawsuit alleging that she was sexually assaulted by President-elect Trump in a department store fitting room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. In May last year, the court ordered President-elect Trump to pay $5 million in damages.
President-elect Trump’s legal team argued that the first trial was influenced by inappropriate witness testimonies and evidence, and requested a retrial.
Jessica Leeds, who testified as a witness during the trial, stated that she was sexually assaulted by President-elect Trump on a flight to New York in the late 1970s when she was in her 30s. Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for the U.S. weekly magazine People, testified that she was forcibly kissed when she visited President-elect Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2005 for an interview. Additionally, a recording from "Access Hollywood" containing President-elect Trump’s obscene remarks was presented as evidence during the trial.
The court determined that President-elect Trump’s side failed to prove errors in the first trial ruling or the necessity for a retrial. The court stated, "It concluded that none of the challenged rulings demonstrated that the district court made an error."
Meanwhile, President-elect Trump also lost in a separate defamation damages lawsuit filed by Carroll. He must pay Carroll $83.3 million (approximately 122.6 billion KRW) in damages. President-elect Trump has appealed this trial result as well.
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