Writer E. Jean Carroll exited the courthouse in New York Friday and posed smiling with her legal team after a jury ordered former President Donald Trump to pay a whopping $83.3 million in additional damages for defaming her by calling her sexual assault allegation against him a lie.
The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation, and another $7.3 million for emotional harm.
This is the second time Trump has been ordered pay Carroll. Last year, he was mandated by a jury to pay $5 million for a separate instance of defamation.
“This is just exponentially more,” CNN correspondent Kara Scannell said outside the courthouse Friday. “The jury is sending a message to Donald Trump. The argument that Carroll’s team has made, which this jury seems to have completely agreed with, is that the only way to stop Donald Trump from repeating these defamatory statements is to hit him in the pocketbook. And that is what they’ve done.”
