Former President Trump claims he was wrongfully silenced during the trial involving author E. Jean Carroll, whose lawsuit against Trump concluded Tuesday with a jury finding he sexually assaulted and defamed her, saying that he will appeal the case over its “unconstitutional silencing.”
“Waiting for a jury decision on a False Accusation where I, despite being a current political candidate and leading all others in both parties, am not allowed to speak or defend myself, even as hard nosed reporters scream questions about this case at me. In the meantime, the other side has a book falsely accusing me of Rape, & is working with the press,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday, hours before the verdict was announced.
“I will therefore not speak until after the trial, but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome!” he added.
Judge Lewis Kaplan previously raised concerns about the former president’s public comments on the trial. A court filing by Carroll’s lawyers pointed to Kaplan’s concerns about the posts, who earlier said Trump was “basically endeavoring certainly to speak to his ‘public,’ but, more troublesome, to the jury in this case about stuff that has no business being spoken about.”
“For the reasons previously stated, we continue to object to Mr. Trump’s public statements about evidence the Court held to be inadmissible at trial and remain concerned about the prejudice that his statements may have already caused Plaintiff in these proceedings” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in the letter.
Carroll’s legal team sent the letter to Kaplan earlier this month, raising their concerns about Trump’s Truth Social posts he made during the beginning of the trial. One of the posts in question called Carroll’s lawyer a “political operative” and decried the allegations as a “fraudulent & false story.”
A separate separate post flagged by Carroll’s legal team questioned whether Carroll made a police report at the time, saying, “Does anybody believe that I would take a then almost 60 year old woman that I didn’t know, from the front door of a very crowded department store, (with me being very well known, to put it mildly!, into a tiny dressing room, and …. her.”
The former president was given the opportunity to defend himself in a testimony to the jury during the trial, but he did not appear. The court granted Trump three days to file a motion to reopen his case last week “for the sole purpose of testifying as a witness in this case,” but Trump ultimately missed the deadline earlier this week.
In 2019, Carroll publicly accused Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Later, she filed a civil lawsuit in federal court surrounding those claims, adding that Trump defamed her with his denial of them.
The trial lasted nearly two weeks, with closing arguments beginning Monday and jury deliberations beginning Tuesday.
The nine-person jury did not find that the president committed rape but did hold him liable for sexual abuse of Carroll, the first time a trial has resulted in Trump being found liable for sexual misconduct.
The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll when he denied her allegations against him, ordering the former president to pay a total of $5 million in damages.