Trump in court as lawyers fight to overturn verdict in E. Jean Carroll sex abuse suit

NEW YORK — Veering from the campaign trail to a courtroom, Donald Trump quietly observed Friday as one of his lawyers fought to overturn a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The Republican nominee and his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a writer, sat at tables about 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart, in a federal appeals court. Trump didn’t acknowledge or look at Carroll as he passed directly in front of her on the way in and out, but he shook his head at points, such as when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer told 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.

“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that the jury was allowed to consider such items as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted for years ago about grabbing women’s genitals.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the judges the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago.

”E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and did the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.

Carroll, standing with Kaplan outside the courthouse afterwards, declined to comment.

Trump left court in a motorcade, then delivered a lengthy diatribe against the case at Trump Tower, where he said again that Carroll — and other women who had accused him of sexual assault — were doing everything up.