Donald Trump will likely appeal a jury verdict that he's liable for the sexual assault and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, but such an appeal will be deemed less credible because the former president didn't provide a defense, a former federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Laura Coates, who worked as a federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in the Bush and Obama administrations, said to Jake Tapper on CNN that she fully expects Trump to appeal the verdict, which found that Trump owed Carroll $5 million but stopped short of holding Trump accountable for rape. The host asked Coates about whether Trump would appeal, and what his chance of success in that case might be.
"He absolutely will appeal, and I would expect him to do so as I would any other litigant, even if this amount might not as consequential to, say, Donald Trump as it would be for the average person, it's still a finding that you committed a sexual act against somebody in a non-consensual way, and defamation," Coates told Tapper. "These are very very consequential and important allegations against him, that now a jury has found to be true."
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Coates added that any appeal from Trump in this matter will be looked at skeptically because Trump himself chose not to defend himself from the allegations at trial.
"But at the end of the day, the appeal won't have as much credibility because he did not put on a case," she said. "And so a jury did look at this and say, based on what we're seeing, that's what we're finding. So, even an appeal that says no reasonable jury would have ever found this, well, what are you gonna do? If I only heard one side and your deposition."
