Jan 16, 2024 - 15:21
By cnbc.com

Trump sex attack defamation trial begins, one day after historic Iowa win

Donald Trump is set to begin a civil trial in a sex assault defamation lawsuit by the writer E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan federal court.
Trump plans to attend the trial, which is starting a day after his big win in the Iowa presidential caucuses over Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy,
Carroll last year won a $5 million verdict over the Republican front-runner when a jury found he has sexually abused and defamed her.

A day after scoring a landslide win in the Iowa Republican caucuses, former President Donald Trump is set to begin a civil trial in a sex assault defamation lawsuit by the writer E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan federal court.

Trump is in the courtroom for the trial Tuesday, when jury selection and opening statements are both expected to take place.

The trial will determine just one question: what damages Trump should pay Carroll for defamatory statements he made about her while he was president, and then again last year, denying her claim that he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Carroll's lawyers want him to pay at least $10 million.

Another jury in a trial last fall found that the Trump had sexually abused her in the incident, and had defamed her in late 2022 in statements denying the allegation. That jury, which did not find him liable for raping Carroll, ordered him to pay her $5 million.

Trump is appealing the verdict in that case. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has presided over both cases, in September said the verdict in the first trial finding that Carroll was telling the truth about Trump assaulting her and "precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements" about her.