Trump’s Legal Defeat: Supreme Court Upholds Sexual Abuse and Defamation Verdict Against E. Jean Carroll

Original article: Trump no pudo zafar: Suprema deja firme condena por abuso sexual y difamación contra Jean Carroll

The United States Supreme Court dealt a definitive blow to former President Donald Trump by refusing to review the case declaring him guilty of sexual abuse and defamation against author E. Jean Carroll, effectively upholding a $5 million judgment that Trump attempted to evade at all costs.

On Monday, June 29, the nation’s highest court issued an order dismissing the appeal filed by Trump’s legal team. The decision, made with no notable dissent, solidifies the jury’s verdict from May 2023, which found the Republican mogul liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and damaging her reputation by publicly labeling her a liar. This rejection means the far-right figure must pay the imposed damages.

The events leading to this legal battle date back to 2019, when the former Elle magazine columnist broke her silence to accuse Trump, who was serving as president during his first term, of attacking her in the dressing room of a department store. The Republican reacted vehemently on his platform Truth Social, dismissively labeling the allegations as a “hoax” and a “scam” orchestrated to undermine his political image.

However, the jury that examined the evidence during the 2023 trial not only believed Carroll’s testimony, but also determined that Trump’s statements constituted malicious defamation, thus justifying the multimillion-dollar compensation that the Supreme Court has now refused to overturn.

Rather than accepting the ruling with resignation, Trump launched attacks on the judicial system from his social media account. The former president labeled the case as a “fake case” presented by “a woman he never met” and insisted he would continue “the fight against this judicial weaponization,” maintaining that he was a victim of a retroactive law in New York designed “to unfairly trap him.”

His main argument claims that the process “goes against the United States and everything the country represents,” and warned that “something like this should never happen to another president or presidential candidate,” in an effort to politicize a verdict that his attorneys failed to overturn, reported Cuba Debate.

Ruling Marks the End of Trump’s Attempts to Evade Accountability for His Actions.

The legal defeats are far from over for the American president. His legal representatives have already confirmed that they plan to appeal a second verdict, this time concerning $83.3 million awarded to Carroll in a subsequent trial for ongoing defamation. This setback adds to a long list of legal troubles that have plagued Trump, including his historic conviction in May 2024 for 34 counts of accounting fraud related to payments made to a former adult film actress. During that instance, the mogul also labeled the process a “shame for the judicial system,” asserting that the trial was aimed at damaging his reputation to make him lose the elections, a narrative he repeats with every new ruling against him.

Furthermore, Trump’s legal file is also tainted by his ties to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the sex offender whose files were published by his Administration largely redacted. Many have accused that censorship of being a deliberate strategy to protect high-profile offenders, including the former president, while violating the rights of victims by revealing their identities without consent.

The response from Carroll’s legal representation was swift. Roberta Kaplan, attorney for E. Jean Carroll, issued a statement celebrating the ruling and emphasizing that all of the former president’s attempts to appeal the verdict “have failed,” thus putting “an end to his efforts to evade responsibility for his actions.”