The former president of the United States donald trump He was found guilty this Tuesday of «sexual abuse» and defamation, but not of rape, in the case as a result of the writer’s complaints E.Jean Carroll. This is the first time that a former US president has been found responsible for sexual assault.
(Keep reading: Who is Jean Carroll, the woman accusing Trump of raping her?)
Carroll accused Trump of raping her in the changing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and also of defaming her when she decided to go public with her complaint in a memoir she published in 2019.
(Furthermore: Writer Carroll Appears as Witness in Trial Against Trump: ‘He Raped Me’)
The former president, however, has always denied those weapons, calling the writer a liar and pointing out that she is «mentally ill.»
This Tuesday the jury, made up of nine people (six men and three women), extended, in addition, that Trump will have to compensate Carroll with five million dollars for assault and defamation, reported US media.
(You can read: Trump accused the woman who said so of rape of being «mentally ill»)
The jury hearing the case reached a verdict in record time. Retired to deliberate shortly before noon on Tuesday, and discounting the hour of lunch break, the jury needed less than three hours to reach a unanimous agreement.
EFE/EPA/JUSTIN LANE
(Also: Woman who sued Trump for rape doesn’t want money, but ‘his good name’)
The judge had spent an hour and a half this morning explaining in a detailed way what the different manifestations meant and the associated concepts -consent, sexual assault, forced touching- that were elucidated in the case of rape, or the existence of a will to harm in the case of defamation.
Trump has not compared in all this timewhile the writer has done so in all the sessions during the two weeks that the trial has lasted.
‘It has nothing to do with money’
This Monday, Carroll’s lawyer told the Manhattan court that the writer is not seeking money in the trial against the former president, but rather «to restore his good name.» In the last session used to listen to the defense and accusation arguments, the lawyer Roberta Kaplan, from the accusing team, examined dismantling the arguments of Trump’s defense, but insisted on the motivations of her client, according to information from the media present at the Hall.
«For Jean Carroll, this complaint has nothing to do with money,» he insisted, but it is about «recovering his good name,» he said, referring to the different qualifiers that Carroll has received from Trump – as a liar or mentally ill, among others – since he learned of the complaint.
Kaplan addressed Trump’s commented-on remark that Carroll was «not (his) type» again, and recorded jurors’ reaction to seeing an old photo in which he mistook Carroll for his own ex-wife Marla Trump.
GUILLERMO MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME