i also take judge kaplan s instruction to them today seriously, which is you guys should not reveal your identity because of what this guy will do to you. jurors, if you can hear us, we re cure wrs but we don t need to know who you are. also a lot happier the people who don t know. hats offeo to you, you new yorkers. all right, buddy, thank you as always. and thank you at home for joining us this hour. quote, no one is above the law not even a former president of the united states. that is how roberta kaplan, the lawyer for writer e. jean carroll, that is how she began her statement after the verdict was read in the case against former president trump. carroll herself said, quote, i filed this lawsuit against donald trump to clear my name and to get my life back. today the world finally knows the truth. this afternoon a jury of six men and three women in manhattan found former president donald trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. the decision was quick and it was
he defamed her by denying it happened. this is moments away. we will bring it to you live here and stay with it throughout this hour. national correspondent bryan llenas is standing by at the courthouse while we wait for the news that the jurors are about to present this verdict. hi, brian. yes, i m here in new york. we have our producers at the courthouse. we re waiting now what the verdict is. it said that they would be announcing it at 3:00. we re looking to see as soon as we get the verdict what it is. in this case we need to step back here, this is a civil federal case, which means that all nine jurors must come to a unanimous decision on whether or not they believe former president trump committed assault, a battery and whether or not he defamed e. jean carroll. the burden of proof here is lower than a criminal case. you must proved beyond a reasonable doubt in this case. the only thing they have to do is convince the jury that e. jean carroll said the events more tha
trump has not been convicted of any crime, nor will he face any prison time, but this is still very much accountability. a former president and the current republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential race has been found liable for sexual abuse. now, president trump s lawyer in the case, joe tacopina, he told press outside the courthouse today that, quote, he was found not liable for the rape and that s it. we re already starting to see that narrative, the narrative that only focuses on that one finding by this jury, we are already starting to see that narrative take hold in the fringes of right-wing media. and former president trump is, of course, calling the trial unfair and a witch hunt. but check out how fox news reacted to this today. a witch hunt is sort of an obsession that you go on forever in investigative fashion chasing after a case that doesn t really
right. maybe that will be the conclusion. i suspect the conclusion instead for a lot of will be that a witch hunt is an obsession that you go on forever and investigative fashion chasing after a case that doesn t really exist. whereas in this instance, people brought forward evidence and it was presented to a jury, not to like a panel of democrats and they unanimously found that he s liable. they did it in a discriminating way. they were not willing to say he committed rape. i suspect what happened here is because of the lack of forensic support for mrs. carroll s story, the jury was only willing to go as far as to corroborate that she had in the way of the other wantses that came forward that didn t allege they were raped. they allege that they were