A federal court on Wednesday denied Donald Trump’s plea for a mistrial in the E. Jean Carroll case after a jury ruled last month that the former president must pay her more than $83 million.
Trump’s lawyers said in their mistrial motion that Carroll erased threatening messages, including death threats, which was grounds for a mistrial.
In a 30-page judgment issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan stated that while Carroll admitted to deleting some of the alleged death threats, the specifics of the deletions are unclear. He ruled that Trump’s lawyers failed to show that any of the missing texts would have helped his case, which was required to prove that her deletions were prejudicial.
Attorneys for Trump and Carroll did not immediately respond to calls for comment on Wednesday.
According to Kaplan, Trump’s counsel was aware of Carroll’s deletion of some emails as early as January 2023, and she repeated this testimony at her first trial last year. Kaplan noted that Trump’s team never followed up on such confessions, bringing them to the court’s attention or attempting to recover the texts.
“Mr. Trump has offered no evidence that he ever even attempted to recover any of these messages through discovery or otherwise,” Mr. Kaplan stated. “In reality, he does not even claim that the messages in question are permanently destroyed and cannot be recovered. This failing alone was sufficient to deny the alternative remedies he sought.”
“Even if it is accurate, it is far from sufficient to warrant relief,” Kaplan stated in the decision.
Kaplan also stated that throughout the trial, the jury heard testimony about “the disposal of some electronic communications,” and that both sides debated the relevance of Carroll’s conduct.
“The Court provided adequate instructions on the topic. “And the jury returned its verdict,” he stated. “A mistrial at this point would be a bootless exercise.”
Kaplan refused motions for a mistrial throughout the trial.
Last month, a New York jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after she claimed Trump defamed her. Last year, a jury convicted Trump responsible for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s.