Former President Donald Trump insisted Friday he is not only innocent of allegations that he sexually assaulted magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll almost 30 years ago, but he also blamed the matter on a "whole rigged election system."
Trump spoke at a news conference in New York after asking a federal appeals court to overturn the $5 million jury verdict that found him liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and defaming her after she sued him.
"It's an appeal of a ridiculous verdict of a woman I have never met," Trump told reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan for a lengthy news conference after the hearing. "I don't know, I have no idea who she is. She wrote a book and she made a ridiculous story up. She put it in her book and we're now appealing the decision."
Trump's appeal was filed in connection with the May 2023 civil verdict against him, stemming from Carroll's claims that he assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
Jurors in the case awarded Carroll, who was present at Friday's court proceeding, a $2.02 million verdict on the assault claims and $2.98 million for claims of defamation in connection with an October 2022 Truth Social post, where Trump called her claims a hoax.
On Friday, Trump continued to call the claims false and criticized presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan, calling him an "angry man" who was appointed by Bill Clinton.
"I don't want anything different from anybody else," Trump said. "I just ask for fairness. We have another judge or a couple of judges that I think are fair."
However, he said the public understands what's going on and that his poll numbers "are higher now than they would have been without it because the public understands it's a hoax. It's a scam. It's a political witch hunt."
Trump mentioned his other pending cases, including the sentencing on his business fraud conviction in Manhattan — which has been delayed until after the election — and the 2020 election interference case in Washington, D.C., and called all of the judges "hostile like you wouldn't believe."
Trump said the Carroll case and other cases are "all election interference" that are "fabricated" in front of "very friendly judges."
"It's hard to win in a jury where you have three or four or 5% Republican votes," he said, complaining that much of the evidence that would have exonerated him was not admitted in his other proceedings involving Carroll.
Will Scharf, one of Trump's attorneys, also spoke out, telling the media that Carroll's story is "implausible."
"No fair jury could have reached the verdict that was reached in this case. And as a result, we believe that this verdict needs to be overturned," Scharf said.
Alina Habba, another Trump attorney, said he has been "targeted with lies," and that if he wins in November, his administration will "stop Kamala Harris' regime" because she is putting federal officials in local district attorney offices to attack her political opponent.
"As a woman who has stood with President Trump, who has spent extensive time with President Trump and with his beautiful family, I will tell you that is not President Trump," she said. "And I completely am disgusted by what I have seen happen to this person, his family, and the Trump Organization."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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