Two days after a civil trial concluded that the former US president had sexually assaulted a woman named E Jean Carroll in a New York department shop, Donald Trump filed a court notice of appeal.
In response to Ms. Carroll’s claim that Mr. Trump assaulted her in the 1990s, a New York jury granted her nearly $5 million in damages.
76-year-old Mr. Trump was found guilty of battery and slander by the jury, but not rape.
Mr Trump denies knowing or ever meeting Ms Carroll, 79.
His appeal comes a day after the former president called his accuser a “wack job” during a CNN town hall event.
“I swear on my children, which I never do. I have no idea who this woman is. This is a fake story,” he said.
He accused the civil trial’s presiding judge of anti-Trump bias and said that his decision not to testify in person would not have made any difference to the outcome.
The jury’s verdict represented the first instance of holding Trump legally responsible for assault, considering the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct made against him by over two dozen women.
Ms Carroll, a writer and long-time advice columnist, claimed Trump raped her inside a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and has defamed her by calling her allegation “a hoax and a lie”.
The jury of six men and three women deliberated for less than three hours on Tuesday before reaching their decision.
Standard of Proof in Civil Cases and Criminal cases,
The standard of proof in civil cases is lower than in criminal cases, which means that jurors only needed to find that it was more likely than not that Mr. Trump assaulted Ms. Carroll.
While the jury found Mr Trump liable for sexual battery and defamation of Ms Carroll, they did not find Mr Trump liable of raping her. To do so, the jury would have needed to have been convinced that Mr Trump had engaged in non-consensual sexual intercourse with Ms Carroll.
Mr Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina told reporters outside the courtroom that it was “a strange verdict”.
“They rejected her rape claim and she always claimed this was a rape case, so it’s a little perplexing,” he said.
He added that, in Mr Trump’s hometown of New York, where the former president is now unpopular, “you just can’t get a fair trial”.
The case will now move to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Ms Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan earlier expressed confidence to US media that Mr Trump has “no legitimate arguments for appeal”.
“I’ve rarely felt more confident about an appeal than I do about this one,” she said.
Ms Kaplan also told the New York Times that her client was giving “serious consideration” toward filing a new defamation suit against Mr Trump over his latest comments on CNN.
Mr Trump is currently the frontrunner to once again win the Republican nomination for president in 2024, earning more than 50% support in national polls, including several conducted after the New York trial began.