NEW YORK (Reuters) -Donald Trump on Thursday asked for a new trial in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, in which a Manhattan jury last month found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages.
In a filing in Manhattan federal court, Trump’s lawyers said the jury’s $2 million award for the sexual abuse portion of the verdict was “excessive” because the jury had found that Carroll was not raped, and that the conduct Carroll alleged did not cause any diagnosed mental injury.
They also said the $2.7 million award for the defamation claim was “based upon pure speculation.”
A lawyer for Carroll had no immediate comment.
Carroll’s lawsuit, filed in 2022, said Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s, and defamed her by denying it happened. Trump has called Carroll’s claims a “hoax.”
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York)
