Former President Donald Trump on Saturday stood by his 2019 statement that writer E. Jean Carroll made a “totally false accusation” against him, despite similar claims resulting in him losing a defamation case in January.
Campaigning at a rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump referenced the $91.6 million bond he posted on March 8, three days before his deadline to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her in statements he made as president after denying her accusation that he’d raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Carroll first came forward in 2019 with sexual assault claims against Trump before another civil trial in May 2023, where a New York jury found that the former president sexually abused Carroll but didn’t rape her.
FWIW the New York jury found that she didn’t prove he forced his penis inside of her. They found he did force his fingers inside of her vagina. In New York state law, that is sexual assault but not rape. It is rape according to federal law, and most colloquial uses of the term “rape.” Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, that is what was proven in court.
He wasn’t charged with rape in either state or federal court, because the statute of limitations had expired when she went public with her story.
So it’s important to be clear, the jury did not find him innocent of rape. They found he did commit an act that is widely considered rape. It’s inaccurate to say that they found he didn’t rape her. They found that the act that had been proven did not meet the narrow New York state law standard for rape.
Juries never find you innocent of anything. They find you not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a big difference.
Anyone who claims that a court found them innocent is lying.
Fine, but they also did not find him “not guilty” of rape because he wasn’t charged with rape. He was sued for making defamatory statements, and the jury found that he had forcibly penetrated her with his fingers and then claimed he didn’t.
That is rape. In New York, it would not be enough to convict him of rape, but he wasn’t on trial for rape so the New York State legal definition is irrelevant. He was not found “not guilty” of rape.
Maybe, but the judge also clarified that he would be guilty of rape had the statute of limitations not run out.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/a-federal-judge-has-gone-to-great-lengths-to-make-clear-trump-really-did-rape-e-jean-carroll/