On Friday, A federal appeals court in an 8-2 vote Friday declined President Trump’s bid to rehear his appeal of a jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
A three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the verdict late last year. On Friday, the full active 2nd Circuit bench declined to disturb that decision over the dissent of two judges.
“Simply re-litigating a case is not an appropriate use of the en banc procedure,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Myrna Pérez, joined by three of her colleagues, all of whom were appointed by former President Biden.
“In those rare instances in which a case warrants our collective consideration, it is almost always because it involves a question of exceptional importance or a conflict between the panel’s opinion and appellate precedent,” Pérez added.
In 2023, the New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and defaming her by denying her story when she came forward during Trump’s first presidency. The jury ordered Trump to pay $5 million.
Two Trump-appointed 2nd Circuit judges, Steven Menashi and Michael Park, in dissent said Friday that the trial included a “series of indefensible evidentiary rulings.”
“The result was a jury verdict based on impermissible character evidence and few reliable facts. No one can have any confidence that the jury would have returned the same verdict if the normal rules of evidence had been applied,” Menashi wrote.
