E. Jean Carroll notched another legal victory against former President Trump on Wednesday, reports CNBC, with a federal judge ruling that Trump is liable in her defamation case against him. "The jury found that Mr. Trump knew that his statement that Ms. Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior purposes was false or that he acted with reckless disregard to whether it was false. Whether Mr. Trump made the 2019 statements with actual malice raises the same issue," said US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan in a statement.
Per the Hill, Kaplan's ruling means that the jury in Carroll's defamation trial, scheduled for January 15, needs only to consider how much—not if—Trump owes Carroll in damages. Separately, the Hill notes that the trial's start date is the same as the Iowa caucuses. In May, a jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s and of defaming her while denying her claims of the assault after she went public in 2019. He was at the time ordered to pay Carroll $5 million. (More E. Jean Carroll stories.)
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