Jury reaches decision in Carroll defamation trial vs Trump – live

Jury reaches decision in Carroll defamation trial vs Trump

Victoria Bekiempis

The jury in E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against Donald Trump has reached a decision, court officials said. Carroll– who in a 2023 trial won a $5m verdict against Trump for sexual abuse, and defamation, over his denials–is seeking damages to repair her reputation and deter Trump from continuing to defame her.

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room around late 1995, when New York magazine in June 2019 published an excerpt of her then-forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.

Trump subsequently went on the attack, calling Carroll a liar and a political operative who wanted to drum up book sales. He has continued to do so, despite the prior verdict, including throughout this trial.

The judge in this case, Lewis Kaplan, said that the jury’s factual finding in that case would be accepted in this trial, meaning jurors were only charged with determining damages.

In her closing on Friday, Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), asked jurors to award at least $24m.The decision is expected to be read in court soon.

E. Jean Carroll walks outside the Manhattan Federal Court, in New York City earlier today. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

The family of Elizabeth Sennett, who was murdered by Kenneth Smith, spoke to the press following Smith’s execution in Alabama on Thursday using an untested nitrogen gas method.

Here’s what they had to say:

Will we get a verdict in author E Jean Carroll’s second defamation case against Donald Trump? We are waiting to find out, but for those of you just joining us, here’s a rundown from the Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis of the day’s proceedings, including Trump’s abrupt storming out of the courtroom as Carroll’s lawyers were talking:

As E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against Donald Trump neared its final stage Friday morning in New York, proceedings quickly took a turn for the absurd with the judge threatening his lawyer with “lockup” and the ex-president leaving about 10 minutes into the former Elle writer’s closing argument. Trump returned to court for his defense’s closing.

Trump’s abrupt departure came as Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was delivering her closing argument – shortly after she noted that he had continued to defame the former Elle writer during this very trial. Trump left.

Roberta Kaplan had provided a chronology of the harm endured by Carroll due to Trump’s attacks in advance of the remark that appeared to trigger him.

“Donald Trump’s denials and vicious accusations were all complete lies. That has already been proven, right in this courtroom, by a jury,” Kaplan said.

“That’s why Donald Trump’s testimony was so short yesterday. He doesn’t get a do-over.”

“This case is also about punishing Donald Trump for what he has done and for what he continues to do,” Kaplan said, adding shortly thereafter: “This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all.”

One thing you can expect to hear a lot about from the White House in the months to come is abortion. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have put restoring nationwide access to the procedure at the center of their re-election campaign, but as the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports, activists say they could be doing more to make that goal a reality:

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has made a big bet that outrage over abortion will keep the president in the White House come November.

Over the last several days, the Biden administration has unleashed a blitz of ads and events to spotlight the devastation wrought by the overturning of Roe v Wade. Biden met with a reproductive health task force, while his vice-president, Kamala Harris – who he has entrusted to lead this effort – embarked on a national tour to talk about abortion. They even devoted their first joint campaign stop of 2024 to the issue.

From the podium, Biden promised to sign any bill that would codify Roe’s protections into law and to fight back efforts by Congress to diminish abortion access.

“Donald Trump and Maga Republicans, including the speaker of the House, are hellbent on going even further,” Biden said, a reference to the hard-right Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. “As long as I have power of the presidency, if Congress were to pass a national abortion ban, I would veto it.”

Congress is unlikely to ban or protect abortion anytime soon. Not only is Congress largely frozen – it passed just 27 bills last year – but both political parties seem wary of tackling national legislation around a third-rail topic like abortion.

Now that Roe is gone, the question of if and how to regulate abortion access is largely up to state governments to answer. But the executive branch of the US government still maintains several powers to protect abortion access – and undermine it.

The White House said that Texas governor Greg Abbott’s efforts to defy federal government and supreme court assertions of federal control of the border are “shameful”.

The fight between Texas and the federal government is only intensifying, amid Abbott’s pledge to put more razor wire on the border despite supreme court ruling that federal agents can remove it.

“All we are asking for is border patrol to have access to an area to enforce the law. That’s what they are meant to do, that’s what they are trying to do. We have a governor getting in the way of that,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

The White House has declared the execution of Kenneth Smith last night using nitrogen “very troubling”.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the west wing media briefing, now ongoing, on Friday afternoon that Joe Biden has long had “deep concerns about the death penalty and whether it’s consistent with our values”.

“It’s troubling to hear,” Jean-Pierre said of the news that despite appeals all the way up to the US supreme court and expert opinion that it was inappropriate to try out this unprecedented method on a human being, Smith was executed in Alabama.

Smith, a convicted murderer, was 58 and his lawyers had argued the execution amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.

Smith struggled as he was suffocated by forced breathing of nitrogen, eyewitnesses said. Alabama is now promoting the method to other states.

Amid tense talks in the Senate and fierce chatter on Capitol Hill over a legislative deal linking new immigration regulations with funding for Ukraine, others are weighing in.

David Axelrod, political consultant and former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, said on X/Twitter, amid reports that pressure from Donald Trump could derail bipartisan talks in the US Senate, that Trump would “rather exploit the problem for his own political profit than allow Republicans and Democrats to work together to solve it.”

Arizona congressman Rubén Gallego, who is running for the Senate seat held by Kyrsten Sinema (who is in the thick of the border bill talks), told civil rights organizer Al Sharpton, in a discussion on MSNBC, that the situation in relation to talks was “not ideal” – given that Republican control of the House is pushing Democrats to the right on immigration issues – but that there had to be compromise to get a legislative deal.

Georgia Republican state senators are weighing in fiercely on Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and her prosecution of Donald Trump and others for election interference, in a racketeering case, as they form a committee to investigate her.

Republican state senator Brandon Beach of Alpharetta said that Willis’ employment of [special prosecutor] Wade is a “prosecution for personal profit scheme,” contending that she has stretched out the Trump inquiry to keep paying Wade and derive personal benefit, the Associated Press further reports.

I believe this scheme — prosecution for personal profit — was a fraud against the court and it was a fraud against you as a Georgia taxpayer,” Beach said.

The new panel would be able to issue subpoenas and require people to testify under oath — powers that no other Georgia legislative committee routinely uses.

People can already be prosecuted for making false statements to Georgia lawmakers. Those are among the criminal charges that Rudy Giuliani and some others face for the false claims they made to Georgia lawmakers in late 2020. They claimed Georgia’s election was marred by widespread fraud and that Trump and not Democrat Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp has said he favors a revived prosecutor oversight board looking into whether Willis did anything wrong, instead of a legislative committee.

Democratic senator Josh McLaurin accused Republicans of going down a “dangerous path” by catering to Republicans who have shown themselves willing to threaten violence against Georgia lawmakers seen as insufficiently supportive of Trump.

If you guys think you can handle it — if you think you can inflame that base, and feed them more, feed them misinformation, or let them persist in their misinformation about the results of elections — and not face the consequences someday, I think you’re mistaken,” McLaurin said.

Here is my colleague Sam Levine’s latest analysis on Willis and the case.

Georgia senate creates panel to investigate Fani Willis

Georgia’s state senate has joined attempts to investigate Fulton county District Attorney Fani Willis, voting 30-19 on Friday to create a special committee that Republican senators say is needed to determine whether the prosecutor misspent state tax money in her ongoing prosecution of former US president Donald Trump and others, the Associated Press reports.

This has to do with following state funds. We want to know where is our money going,” said Republican senator Matt Brass of Newnan.

The committee, which doesn’t require approval by the state House or Governor Brian Kemp, is tasked with making recommendations on state laws and spending based on its findings. But the committee can’t directly sanction Willis, and Democrats denounced it as a partisan attempt to try to play to Trump and his supporters.

You’re talking about partisan politics. That’s all you’re talking about,” said Democratic senator. David Lucas of Macon.

Trump on Thursday joined an effort by co-defendant Michael Roman to have Willis, special prosecutor Nathan Wade and their offices thrown off the case. Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Roman, filed a motion Jan. 8 accusing Willis of having an inappropriate romantic relationship with Wade that resulted in a conflict of interest.

Willis has yet to respond publicly to the allegations of a romantic relationship between her and Wade. But she vigorously defended Wade and his qualifications.

A filing in Wade’s divorce case includes credit card statements that show Wade — after he had been hired as special prosecutor — bought plane tickets in October 2022 for him and Willis to travel to Miami and bought tickets in April to San Francisco in their names.

Immigration officials did not document the medical necessity of at least two hysterectomies they authorized for women in their custody, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General.

Investigators contracted with an OB/GYN to review six hysterectomies performed on migrant women who were in federal custody. The doctor found that in two of the cases, officials had failed to document whether it was medically necessary, the watchdog report states.

“Our contracted OB/GYN concluded that for two of six hysterectomies performed, the detained non-citizens’ IHSC medical files did not demonstrate that a hysterectomy was the most appropriate course of treatment and was medically necessary,” investigators wrote. “[Immigration health] officials agreed that their medical files did not contain the necessary documentation to demonstrate the medical necessity of these two hysterectomies.”

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) finding was part of a larger review that concluded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not follow proper procedures to authorize dozens of such surgeries between fiscal years 2019 and 2021. Looking at a sample of 227 major surgeries, investigators found 72 of them – about a third – did not follow proper procedures.

While a clinical director is supposed to approve all major surgeries, investigators found these surgeries were approved by other healthcare personnel, like a nurse or nurse practitioner.

Based on that sample, OIG said it could infer with 95 percent confidence that between 137 and 217 of 553 major surgical procedures were not properly approved in the timeframe it studied.

The Guardian will have a fuller report on this on our website soon.

The day so far

The prospects of Congress voting on a deal to tighten immigration policy and approve military aid to Israel and Ukraine faced a new threat in the form of Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s objection to reported provisions in the deal. Johnson’s opposition came a day after fury erupted when the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, told his lawmakers behind closed doors that he may reject whatever deal is reached to allow Donald Trump to campaign on immigration. McConnell reportedly walked back those comments in another meeting with his party, but the prospects of a bargain to address one of the most intractable issues in American politics continue to look grim.

Here’s what else happened today so far:

Trump stormed out of closing arguments in the New York City trial of author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him.

Johnson also pledged to move forward with impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on claims he is responsible for the surge in migrants crossing the southern border.

The Biden administration paused approvals of new natural gas export terminals, citing their impact on the climate.

Trump’s attorney Alina Habba has just wrapped up her closing arguments in the defamation lawsuit against him.

We are now hearing the rebuttal from author E Jean Carroll’s attorney.