Former federal prosecutor Temidayo Aganga-Williams previewed how the jury in former President Donald Trump’s E. Jean Carroll defamation trial in New York could financially punish him on MSNBC Friday.
Carroll’s lawyers have requested roughly $12 million in compensatory damages from Trump to mend the damage to her reputation and high punitive deterrent damages, The Wall Street Journal reported. Aganga-Williams explained how much freedom the jury has to decide what the punitive damages will be and predicted it will be a substantial amount on “Jose Diaz-Balart Reports.” (RELATED: Judge Denies Trump’s Team From Referencing E. Jean Carroll’s Rape Claim For Future Defamation Trial)
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“Punitive damages, that’s really the number that we’re interested in here because that is about punishing the former president. That’s about the jury teaching him a lesson, saying ‘how much money would it take for you to stop doing this?'” Aganga-Williams said. “What is important to know is that in the law, punitive damages are not the norm in cases… You need something – a kind of behavior, a kind of mal-intent to do something egregious here.”
“I think the fact that we’re likely to see a high punitive damages number is going to reflect the jury saying that… ‘you weren’t just attacking her or committing an offense against her, you did something that was so bad that we have to do a high number that will hurt your pocketbook that you won’t do it again,'” he added.
Trump’s testimony about his immense wealth could also lead to the jury coming up with a higher number in order to punish him, Aganga-Williams asserted.
“This jury has a big question of, ‘do you go $10, $20, $30, $40,$ 50, $60 million?’ And they may all have disagreement there. So, frankly, I would bet by end of Monday we have a decision for sure, perhaps by end of today,” Aganga-Williams said.
“On the punitive front, there has to be some reasonableness,” he explained. “And what I expect to see, if they come back with a number that is truly astronomical, the judge could cut that down to make it more tied to what he sees the facts are, but they do have a lot of leeway deciding what the number will be.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan recently threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom if he persisted in being “disruptive,” according to CNN. Trump stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments Friday.
A jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages in May after the author accused Trump of sexual battery, rape and defamation. The jury found Trump liable for sexual battery and defamation, but not rape.
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