Former President Donald Trump attended arguments in a federal appeals court in New York on Friday as he seeks to erase a $5 million judgment finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
He attended the hearing, which lasted all of 22 minutes, after forgoing a crucial hearing Thursday in his Washington, D.C., criminal case. Trump’s decision to attend brought a spotlight to the case in which a jury concluded he likely committed sexual abuse, just as his presidential campaign enters the final sprint to the election.
The case is one of two in which unanimous federal juries awarded Carroll a total of more than $88 million.
In the May 2023 trial, jurors heard evidence related Carroll’s allegation that in the mid-1990s, Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room and defamed her after she went public with the story. Trump didn’t attend any of that trial, and later faulted his lawyers for advising him to stay away.
He attended and briefly testified at the second trial, which ended in an $83 million judgment in January of this year. Those proceedings revolved around additional accusations of defamation.
In his appeal of the first judgment, which Trump’s attorneys argued Friday, they claimed the judge issued “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary rulings.” They said two of Carroll’s friends should not have been allowed to testify. The friends said Carroll confided in them in the 1990s, shortly after the alleged attack. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
Trump attorney John Sauer called the case a “quintessential ‘he said, she said’ case,” and said the evidence was “implausible.”
Sauer also said two other women should not have been allowed on the stand. Carroll’s attorneys called Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who testified about alleged abuse by Trump that bore similarities to Carroll’s accusations.
Sauer argued that Leeds’ claim, that Trump groped her on an airplane, occurred before any federal law barred that.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said Sauer was incorrect.
“The answer to that is that it was a crime in 1979,” citing a federal statute in effect at the time.
Kaplan said the women’s stories were crucial to establishing a pattern of behavior that aligned with Carroll’s allegations.
“He had a pattern of sort of pleasant chatting with women, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he would…pounce,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan noted that Trump neither attended the trial nor called any witnesses. She called an “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump described “grabbing” women by their genitals a “confession” and said he stood by his comments in the tape during a deposition for the case.
At a press conference after the hearing, Trump called it “an appeal of a ridiculous verdict of a woman I have never met.”
Trump then acknowledged he has met Carroll. A photo shows them posing with their then-spouses during a party in the 1980s.
Trump made multiple comments during the press conference similar to those already deemed defamatory.
“She made up a story, fabricated 100%,” Trump said.
He then denied Leeds’ and Stoynoff’s allegations, referring to Leeds by her name and Stoynoff as “whatever her name is.”
Carroll’s attorneys have called Trump’s appeal a demand for “a do-over” with “drive-by assertions of error and sweeping complaints of unfairness.”
Lawyers for Trump, the Republican nominee for president, were given 10 minutes to argue their case before a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit panel of three judges appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, both Democrats. Carroll’s attorney was also given 10 minutes.
The panel is not expected to issue a ruling before the election.