Latest news with #RobertaKaplan
The Independent
13-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
NY appeals court rejects bid to overturn Trump's convictions in E. Jean Carroll case
President Donald Trump has lost his latest bid to challenge a civil jury verdict holding him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 90s and then defaming her decades later when she went public with the allegations. On Friday the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York declined Trump's request for a court's full bench to rehear his case. The decision leaves in place a December 2024 ruling by a three-judge panel upholding the 2023 jury verdict, which ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million in damages. Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision. 'E. Jean Carroll is very pleased with today's ruling,' she said. 'Although President Trump continues to try every possible maneuver to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation.' The case is one of two civil suits Carroll, now 81, has filed against Trump, both stemming from his public denials of her 2019 accusation that he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in 1996. In October 2022, Trump defamed Carroll on Truth Social by denying her claim as a hoax. Carroll's first lawsuit, related to Trump's 2019 statements, ended in January 2024 with an $83.3 million defamation verdict in her favor. Trump is also appealing that outcome. Oral arguments in that appeal are scheduled for June 24. The lawsuit at the center of Friday's ruling was filed in 2022 after New York temporarily lifted its statute of limitations for certain sexual assault claims. It included both defamation and battery claims related to Carroll's original allegations and Trump's more recent comments. Two judges—Steven Menashi and Michael Park, both appointed by Trump—dissented from Friday's decision, arguing the court should have reconsidered the case. Menashi accused the panel of deviating from precedent and criticized the trial judge for excluding key evidence and admitting 'stale witness testimony' from another woman who accused Trump of assault during an unrelated encounter. The majority of the appellate court rejected that view. Four judges countered the dissent, writing that the appeal did not meet the high bar required for review, which is typically reserved for cases involving significant legal questions or conflicts in appellate precedent. Judges Denny Chin and Susan Carney, who previously ruled against Trump in the December decision, issued a statement supporting the majority and directly refuting Menashi's arguments. 'Even on his own terms, our dissenting colleague fails to explain why any purported error warrants a retrial or full court review,' they wrote. Trump's final chance to overturn the verdict lies with the Supreme Court. His team has indicated that he will ask the highest court to hear his appeal, but the court is not obligated to do so. According to NBC News, in a statement Friday, a spokesperson for Trump described the lawsuit as a ' Democrat -funded Carroll Hoax' and said the former president 'will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he is focusing on his mission to Make America Great Again. '
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Trump loses bid for appeals court to reconsider $5m loss to E Jean Carroll
A federal appeals court on Friday declined to rehear President Donald Trump's challenge to a $5m (£3.6m) sexual abuse and defamation suit he lost to writer E Jean Carroll two years ago. In May 2023, a New York jury awarded Ms Carroll damages over her civil claim that Mr Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media. He denied the Trump, 78, had asked for a hearing before the full US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, after a three-judge panel rejected his appeal. The appellate court did not offer an explanation, though two of the 13 judges, both appointed by Mr Trump, dissented. Ms Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 81, accused Mr Trump of attacking her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and later defaming her on Truth Social in a 2022 post denying her claim. Mr Trump has called her accusations a lie on several occasions, claiming she was "not my type". The US Supreme Court is the last place Mr Trump can appeal the $5m decision. He has also appealed a separate jury's decision in 2024 finding him liable of defaming Ms Carroll and awarding her nearly $84m. In a statement to US media, Ms Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said her client was "very pleased" with the news. "Although President Trump continues to try every possible manoeuvre to challenge the findings of two separate juries, those efforts have failed. He remains liable for sexual assault and defamation," she said. The BBC has contacted Mr Trump's legal team for comment. In their written two dissent, the two Trump-appointed judges, Steven Menashi and Michael Park, said the decision not to rehear the case "sanctioned striking departures" from legal precedent.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MTA defies feds' fourth deadline to kill congestion pricing, calls Duffy threats a ‘sham'
Fourth time's a 'sham.' The Metropolitan Transportation Authority defied the feds' fourth deadline to kill congestion pricing — while ripping Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's repeated threats as a 'sham.' In a pair of letters sent to Duffy on Wednesday, the MTA and the state Department of Transportation said that his deadlines and letters threatening to yank federal funding were irrelevant — since the battle over the tolling program is playing out in court. The May 21 time limit for the MTA to stop collecting the $9 tolls on drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street was ordered in a letter Duffy sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul last month — when his third deadline came and went. The April 21 letter gave Hochul another 30 days to prove to him why the US Department of Transportation shouldn't 'remedy New York's non-compliance' by yanking untold amounts of federal transit funding. But state agencies argued in the recent filings that the whiplash back-and-forth was 'procedurally improper.' The MTA attorneys argued there wasn't even a point in responding to Duffy's threat, since according to the transportation secretary's original Feb. 19 letter announcing he was pulling federal approval for the first-in-the-nation program, he has already made up his mind. That letter 'already purported to 'terminate'' congestion pricing, wrote attorney Roberta Kaplan, 'without any prior notice or opportunity to be heard as required by the relevant regulations.' 'It is thus obvious that USDOT's decision has already been made, and that this is an 'opportunity to be heard' in name only,' Kaplan argued. 'Secretary Duffy did not afford the Project Sponsors any notice or due process before that alleged termination, and he cannot cure that failure now through a sham exchange of letters,' Kaplan wrote. The state DOT letter goes further, and hints that Duffy's lawyers may be trying to form a new legal argument to kill the toll — citing Duffy's ask last month that Hochul address 'policy concerns' mentioned in his Feb. 19 missive. 'The Secretary's February 19 letter did not state that those policy concerns were an independent basis for his decision,' state Assistant Attorney General Andrew Frank wrote, 'and as a legal matter they cannot be a basis for termination.' Kaplan added that 'those supposed policy concerns' were mere 'after-the-fact rationalizations to justify the Secretary's illegal attempt to end the Program.' Both comments hint at the concerns expressed in an internal Department of Justice memo erroneously filed to the public docket on behalf of the US DOT by since-removed federal attorneys. The memo expressed doubts over Duffy's legal reasoning behind his original letter, casting his strategy as 'very unlikely' to succeed, and encouraged a move towards one focused on shifting priorities and policies. The latest filing by the feds in the case is a memo opposing the MTA's request for a preliminary injunction asking the judge to bar Duffy from making good on his threat to pull funding in retaliation for the agency not stopping the tolls. The memo notes that the US DOT's 'decision making process is still unfolding.' A federal DOT spokesperson told The Post that 'we will be reviewing New York's response to determine if they remain in compliance.'
