By Jack
Queen and Jonathan
Stempel
NEW YORK, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A
lawyer for Donald
Trump urged an appeals court to throw out a $5
million verdict finding Trump liable for sexually assaulting and
defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, saying testimony from two other
female accusers was improperly admitted at trial.
Trump, the Republican presidential
nominee, left the campaign trail to attend Friday's hearing before the
2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the May
2023 civil jury verdict should stand.
Much of Friday's arguments turned on
whether the trial judge should have let jurors hear testimony from two
other women who said the former U.S. president sexually mistreated them
decades ago.
Trump's lawyer John Sauer also
objected to letting jurors see a 2005 "Access Hollywood" video where
Trump boasted graphically about forcing himself on women.
"This case is a textbook example of
implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory,
inadmissible propensity evidence," Sauer said.
Wearing a blue suit and red tie,
Trump showed little emotion during the arguments, but shook his head
when Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan accused him of a pattern of
"chatting up" women before he "pounced" on them.
Friday's panel of three judges, all
appointed to the bench by Democratic presidents, did not say when it
would rule.
TRUMP ATTACKS 'RIDICULOUS CASE'
The verdict stemmed from Trump's
encounter around 1996 with Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman department
store dressing room in Manhattan, and an October 2022 Truth Social post
where he called Carroll's claim a hoax.
Though jurors stopped short of
finding that Trump raped Carroll, as she had claimed, they awarded the
former Elle magazine advice columnist a respective $2.02 million and
$2.98 million for sexual assault and defamation.
A different jury ordered
Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million
for having defamed her and damaging her reputation in June 2019 after
she first accused him of rape.
Trump, 78, has consistently denied
wrongdoing.
In both denials underlying Carroll's
lawsuits, Trump said he didn't know Carroll, that she was "not my type,"
and that she made up her story to promote her memoir.
Speaking to reporters after oral
arguments, Trump suggested without evidence that a decades-old photo of
him and Carroll, in which he once mistook Carroll for his second wife
Marla Maples, may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
"It's a ridiculous case," Trump
said. "It's political interference, it's a witch hunt."
Trump is also appealing the $83.3
million verdict.
Carroll, 80, also attended
Friday's arguments, wearing a dark blazer and suit with a navy blue
hair ribbon. She and her lawyers did not talk with reporters after
arguments ended.
'HE SAID, SHE SAID'
Both trials were overseen by U.S.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta Kaplan.
Trump's appeal has focused on
whether the judge erred in admitting testimony from Jessica Leeds, who
said Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s, and Natasha
Stoynoff, who said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate
in 2005.
Sauer called the case "a
quintessential he said, she said case" brought by a woman with a
political motive to hurt Trump -- Carroll is a Democrat -- and funded
by Trump's enemies.
Circuit Judge Denny Chin
cautioned, however, that "it's very hard to overturn a jury verdict
based on evidentiary rulings."
Carroll's lawyer Kaplan said Trump
had a habit of letting "pleasant chatting" with women spiral out of
control, and then forcefully denying their accusations he did anything
wrong.
Circuit Judge Susan Carney sought
assurance from Kaplan that jurors were not swayed unduly by Leeds'
testimony, if her accusations proved "too remote (and) too unlike the
circumstances that your client alleged."
Kaplan said she could. "I was
going through the evidence at trial," she said. "It was incredibly
powerful."
Carroll's cases are separate from
multiple criminal cases against Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to
all charges.
Trump was convicted in
May in Manhattan state court of falsifying business records to cover
up a hush money payment to silence porn star Stormy Daniels before the
2016 election.
The judge in that case on Friday delayed
Trump's sentencing to Nov. 26 from
Sept. 18, in part to "avoid any appearance -- however
unwarranted" that the case would interfere with the
U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.
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Reporting by Luc Cohen, Jack Queen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis
