Appeals Court Denies Trump’s Attempt To Overturn E. Jean Carroll Ruling
A federal appeals court on Friday turned away an attempt by President Donald Trump to have a lower court’s ruling in his $5 million sexual abuse case involving former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll overturned.
The decision, first reported on the X platform by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, stemmed from a divided Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in which all 11 judges were involved en banc. The ruling left intact a three-judge decision on Dec. 30 to enforce the jury award.
Carroll, now 81, alleged that Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan around 1996, and later defamed her in an October 2022 Truth Social post by calling her accusation a hoax.
In May 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her by making false statements. However, the jury did not conclude that Trump had raped her, as she originally claimed.
In requesting reconsideration, Trump argued that the trial judge made a mistake by allowing jurors to view the 2005 Access Hollywood video, in which he boasted about his sexual behavior, along with what he described as a “pile-on” of prejudicial evidence involving allegations from two other women.
“Two of the Trump appointees, Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park, on the bench dissent from the en banc decision, saying the judge shouldn’t have admitted ‘propensity’ evidence like the Access Hollywood tape,” Cheney reported on X.
One accuser, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, claimed Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, alleged he forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005. Trump has denied both allegations.
Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is also appealing an $83.3 million jury verdict issued in January 2024, which found he defamed Carroll and harmed her reputation in June 2019 when he first denied her allegation about the incident at Bergdorf Goodman.
In that appeal, Trump contends that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July decision granting him broad criminal immunity also shields him from civil liability in Carroll’s case.
In his 2019 and 2022 statements denying Carroll’s accusations, Trump claimed she was “not my type” and alleged she fabricated the story to promote her memoir.
Trump could also face a third lawsuit from Carroll over a post he made to his Truth Social account during the Memorial Day observance a year ago.
“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION,’” Trump wrote.
“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990’s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!), & sung my praises in the first half of her CNN Interview with Alison Cooper, but changed her tune in the second half – Gee, I wonder why (UNDER APPEAL!)? The Rape charge was dropped by a jury! Or Arthur Engoron, the N.Y. State Wacko Judge who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG, used a Statute that has never been used before, gave me NO JURY, Mar-a-Lago at $18,000,000 – Now for Merchan!” he added.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed to Newsweek that her client was considering yet another lawsuit.
“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today. All options are on the table,” Kaplan said in a statement at the time.
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
