United States: Trump will not be tried again after being convicted of sexual assault

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s appeal on May 9 following a civil conviction for sexually assaulting a former journalist and author in the 1990s and defaming her as a liar.

Manhattan District Judge Lewis Kaplan concluded in his 59-page decision that May’s decision was not a “miscarriage of justice” and that jurors did not reach a “seriously erroneous result.”

At the end of the civil trial, nine jurors in a federal court in Manhattan awarded nearly $5 million in damages to journalist E. Jean Carroll.

E. Jean Carroll, 79, testified during the trial that Donald Trump, 76, raped her in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996, before tarnishing her reputation last October by denouncing a “hoax” and “lie” on social media.

Donald Trump argued during his plea that the $2 million damages award was “excessive” because jurors concluded there was insufficient evidence to classify the assault as rape. He also said that the $3 million defamation award was based on “pure speculation”.

Attorneys for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; French version by Kate Entringer)