A federal jury in New York found former President Donald Trump liable for battery and defamation in a civil trial stemming from allegations he raped the writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. She was awarded $5 million total in damages.
The jury, made up of six men and three women, got the case earlier Tuesday and deliberated for less than three hours. The jury’s decision had to be unanimous.
In closing arguments, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan reminded the jury that for the battery charge, “all you need is that it is more probable than not” that Trump attacked Carroll to find him liable, which is a much lower standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard applied in criminal trials.
The jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but not rape, and also found that he defamed Carroll.
Judging by analysts´ standpoints, it is so hard to unravel what will happen after this trial with Trump´s current presidential campaign.
“It’s something that doesn’t really affect his ability to run as presidential candidate, appear on the ballot or even win the election,” Dereck Muller, law professor at the University of Iowa, told CBS News.
“If he is indicted for a felony and sent to prison, he cannot vote, but he can still win at the polls,” Muller added.
“It certainly won’t help among suburban women who supported Trump in 2016, but who abandoned him in 2018, 2020 and 2022,” it was the criterion of Arizona-based Republican strategist Brian Seitchik.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, for instance, who served as Trump’s White House communications director and is now a frequent critic of him, live-tweeted the Republican Party “should move away from Trump as he is beyond morally defensible.”
Others, on the other hand, point out that the faith professed by Trump’s followers is so strong that he will remain unscathed despite his liable verdict.
“Trump has rank-and-file followers that will support him through thick and thin, and trying to use today’s ruling against him will do nothing to discourage the resolve of his supporters,” Ford O’Connell, a Florida-based Republican strategist, stated.
The truth is that, if the polls are anything to go by, Trump seems to be able to emerge unscathed from events that would be devastating for others.
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