Former president Dona;d Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting writer Jean E. Carroll in a New York City department store in the 1990s, and he demanded a new trial. This was denied today by a judge, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who also gave short shrift to his request to pay less in damages to her.
Kaplan said the unanimous May 9 verdict was "almost entirely in favor of Ms. Carroll," and neither a "seriously erroneous result" nor a "miscarriage of justice."
In seeking a reduction in damages, Trump called the $2 million award for sexual abuse "grossly excessive" because such abuse could have included groping Carroll's breasts through clothing, "a far cry from rape."
But Judge Kaplan said New York's penal law defines rape much more narrowly than ordinary people think of the term, and that Trump was wrong to insist it excused him.
"The proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll's vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm," the judge wrote.
Useful, if disturbing clarity on a detail of the outcome–Trump convicted of sexual assault but not rape–that some commentators unfamiliar with New York law treated as if it exonerated him.
