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E. Jean Carroll on jury’s $83 million Trump ruling: “They said ‘enough'”
E. Jean Carroll, a writer who accused former President Donald Trump of sexual assault and was awarded $83.3 million in damages on Friday for defamatory statements, says she believes the jury was sending a message with their verdict.
“I think they said ‘enough,'” Carroll said in an interview on “CBS Mornings” on Monday. “Enough saying horrible, slimy, terrible things about me.”
Trump has vowed to appeal the decision by a federal jury in New York, which awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages for defamatory statements made after Carroll accused Trump in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room decades earlier. When Trump denied the allegations, calling her a “whack job ” and claiming they had never met, Carroll sued him.
Carroll’s attorneys argued that Trump’s comments subjected her to threats and ruined her reputation. A jury found the former president liable for defamation and sexual abuse in the first lawsuit last year. On Friday, the jury in the second trial was tasked with deciding what damages Carroll would receive.
“Who can conceive of $83 million?” Carroll said of the amount she was awarded.
“It’s inspiring, this amount of money. We can do really a lot of good with this money,” she said.
Michael M Santiago/GettyImages / Getty Images
Carroll described how “terrifying” it was as she anticipated seeing Trump in the courtroom, noting that she “lost language and had a breakdown” as she prepared for the moment. But when she saw him, that all changed.
“It turns out, he’s nothing. The fear lifted,” Carroll said. “He’s just… he’s nothing. I was terrified all this time. He is nothing.”
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said Trump’s continued behavior throughout the trial, both in the courtroom and through posts on social media, likely contributed to the jury’s ruling.
“He misbehaved in the courtroom frequently and he walked out on my closing arguments,” Kaplan noted, “…During the trial he continued to post nasty, defamatory things about E. Jean on Truth Social, he did videos, he did press conferences, and we played that all for the jury. And we said, ‘He can’t respect our system. There was a verdict by a jury that said he can’t do this anymore, and he keeps doing it.'”
And though Trump has so far avoided making comments about her after the latest ruling, Carroll indicated she doesn’t expect the former president’s behavior will stop.
“If Donald Trump needs to use me again to raise campaign funds, I think he will do it,” Carroll said. “He’s just using us. And if he needs us, he will again.”
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
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