In early 2024, the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, found himself at the New York State Supreme Courthouse. On that chilly day of January 11, the closing points of his civil business fraud lawsuit were being deliberated within the imposing walls of the courthouse in New York City.
Amidst these developments, writer E. Jean Carroll persisted in her bid for justice. She prompted the federal appeals court to maintain the multimillion-dollar defamation damages that Trump was deemed to owe her. The claim was based on a contention that the former president had leveraged a ruling on presidential sanctity from the U.S Supreme Court to shun not just criminal allegations but also any civil accountability.
Carroll didn’t hesitate to challenge this standpoint. Her 71-page brief, filed on a Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, underscored her argument. In it, she ardently declared that even a U.S. president ‘is not above the law’, insisting on the importance of this democratic ‘fundamental principle’, a principle highlighted previously by the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity itself.
September had seen Trump hitting back through legal documents, where he described the ongoing case, as well as Carroll’s other lawsuits against him, as legal deviations. He depicted them as ‘miscarriages of justice’ impulsively fuelled by political motivations and unjust monetary gains. He asserted his belief in his immunity from the eye-popping $83.3 million judgment.
Yet, Carroll’s legal representative countered these assertions fiercely, particularly focusing on Trump’s contention about presidential immunity saving him from the civil judgment. The attorney highlighted that Trump elected to dispute Carroll’s defamation charge and brought up the defense of presidential immunity only on the eve of the scheduled trial commencement.
The overseeing judge weighed in and confirmed that presidential immunity didn’t provide cover for Trump’s disputed statements about Carroll. The judge ruled that, even if such immunity was applicable somehow, Trump had consciously decided to forgo that defense.
This latest exchange marked another chapter in the lengthy legal wrangling between Trump and Carroll. This instance came hot on the heels of a similar episode that had concluded less than 30 days before. The same appeals court in New York, renowned for its stringent legal review, had reaffirmed a $5 million verdict favoring Carroll in an unrelated defamation suit against Trump.
The second lawsuit, the one which concluded with an astounding judgment of $83 million, unfolded after Trump, in 2019, continued his tirade against Carroll, dismissing her as untruthful and denying any acquaintance with her.
The judge in this case concluded that, since a jury had previously determined Trump to be guilty of mistreatment towards Carroll, this fact was accepted as established truth for the second trial. As a result, the judge ruled that Trump uttered his defamatory statements knowing fully well their derogatory implications.