United States: The federal appeals court in New York seemed unsympathetic to Trump on Friday while arguing for a new civil trial in the 2023 defamation and assault case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, stating it would be “very hard” to set aside the jury’s decision.
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Asked to respond on the record to the allegation that he falsified the tax returns the Justice Department says is proof of his fraud, Trump instead quietly observed two hours of contempt of court and warmly greeted sketch artist Jane Rosenberg with whom he seemed very friendly when he arrived in the room.
Although, he seemed to avoid looking at Carroll who was only a few feet across the table from him, ABC News reported.
A jury last May said Trump should pay USD 5 million for verbally and sexually damaging Carroll in a dressing room of a department store in the mid-1990s, a result his lawyer said should not occur.
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As per Trum’sp attorney, D. John Sauer, called it “a quintessential ‘he said, she said’ case” that was “funded and encouraged by Donald Trump’s political enemies” and a “textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible propensity evidence.”
However, Judge Danny Chin cut Sauer short, saying, “It’s very hard to overturn a jury verdict based on evidentiary rulings … so why should we order a new trial here?”
Furthermore, Sauer reaffirmed his claim that there had been an “error in the admission” of the infamous “Access Hollywood tape,” on which Trump could be heard boasting of grabbing women, along with the testimony of two women who also claimed that Trump assaulted them two decades ago.
One of the women who came forward, Jessica Leeds, alleged that Trump had grabbed her chest and put his hand up her skirt while they were seated next to each other in the first class of a flight headed to New York in the 70s.
Sauer said Friday it was “manifestly erroneous” for the trial judge to permit the jury to hear the testimony because what Trump was accused of doing was not a crime in this instance as the law was several years later, ABC News reported.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan later put forward some of the arguments given by Sauer as overly complex to the matters before the appeals panel infusing a fight about the admissibility of sexual assault cases as “too many lawyers trying to put a lightbulb”.
She added that the testimony established that Trump could sexually assault women.
Kaplan said, “He had a pattern of, kind of, pleasant chatting with a woman and then out of nowhere he would, for lack of a better term, pounce,” while referring to Trump, who was sitting at the defense table, and shaking his head in negation.
