Fact Check: Was Donald Trump Found Guilty of Rape?

Donald Trump's reputation took a hit this week after a New York civil trial jury found in favor of journalist E. Jean Carroll's claims that he battered and defamed her during the 1990s.

On Tuesday, the Manhattan jury of nine men and three women found the former president liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.

However, the lawsuit's conclusion appears to have led some to believe that Trump has been convicted of rape and used that understanding to attack him on social media.

The Claim

A Facebook post by historian James Fell, published on May 9, 2023, which received 2,700 likes, said: "We all knew Trump is a rapist. The jury in the E. Jean Carroll civil trial agrees."

The Facts

While E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit was a civil trial, the fact that the jury was asked to consider the evidence as to whether Trump raped, sexually abused or forcibly touched her might have led some to believe the matter was criminal or otherwise intimated criminal guilt.

Although understanding the distinction between civil and criminal procedure is quite simple, some of the terminology used in the reporting and commentary surrounding the case has not been as easy.

To assess the accuracy of the claim and the finer details of the case, Newsweek spoke to several experts on U.S. civil law.

To start, it's useful to know what standard or quality of evidence the jury in this civil lawsuit used to make its judgment. Its conclusion was based on something called the preponderance of evidence.

As UC Davis School of Law professor Katherine Florey told Newsweek, that meant "the jury must find that it is more likely than not that the plaintiff's key contentions are true."

"This is a much lower standard than in criminal trials, in which the prosecution's contentions must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt," Florey said. "The preponderance standard could be satisfied if the jury is only 51 percent confident that the plaintiff's version of events is true, whereas in a criminal trial, the jury must have near certainty that the prosecution is correct.

"Liability for sexual assault means that the jury has concluded that the plaintiff has satisfied the preponderance of the evidence standard and that the defendant must pay damages to compensate the victim. There are no criminal consequences to a finding of liability."

The word "liability" is also key. As Notre Dame Law School professor Jay Tidmarsh, an expert in complex civil litigation and civil procedure, told Newsweek, "civil cases do not speak of 'guilt' or 'innocence'" but instead "use the language 'liable' or 'not liable,'" as reporting of the jury's verdict repeated.

"So it is accurate to say that Donald Trump was liable for battery and defamation, but not that he was found guilty of battery and defamation."

The jury could have found Trump liable of battery based on the preponderance of evidence for rape, sexual abuse or forcible touching, of which they found Trump was liable for sexual abuse, Florey explained.

"All three possible findings [rape, sexual abuse, forcible touching] are forms of battery, so a finding that Mr. Trump had engaged in any of these would be sufficient to hold him liable for battery," she said.

"The most precise way to say it would be something like, 'The jury found by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll and therefore was liable for battery.'"

Florey added that to satisfy liability for rape, Carroll would "have had to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Trump penetrated her with his penis."

Although Carroll did not establish this, it does not mean that the jury did not believe her.

"It could mean simply that, particularly given the number of years that had passed since the incident, she was not able to introduce enough evidence on this specific point," Florey added.

So, if Trump was found liable for battery, why were terms like sexual abuse and rape brought up in the reporting?

Carroll's case was brought to trial following the passage of the 2022 Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which extended the statute of limitations for victims of certain sexual contact in which the original statute of limitations expired (as it had in Carroll's case).

Signed into law in May 2022 by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the ASA gave survivors of sexual violence a "one-year lookback window" to sue their alleged abusers regardless of the statute of limitations and when the incident occurred.

The legislation was passed by New York lawmakers as part of a broader reckoning over accountability for sexual abusers, and Carroll indicated early she would use the new law.

Under the law, this covered sexual offenses, as defined in Article 130 of the New York Penal Code, including rape. However, as Tidmarsh told Newsweek, the civil claim was for battery, not rape or sexual abuse.

"Among the [Article] 130 claims are rape, sexual abuse and forcible touching," he said. "Therefore, in order for Ms. Carroll to prevail on the statute of limitations, she needed to prove [by a preponderance of the evidence] that she was the victim of rape or sexual abuse or forcible touching.

"Any one of the three would have sufficed. The jury found two of the three applied, but not rape."

While Trump was not found liable for rape, Tidmarsh said he attached "limited significance to the jury's decision not to find that rape occurred."

"The civil claim is for battery, not rape," he added. "The jury found that Donald Trump battered E. Jean Carroll. And Ms. Carroll was able to fit within the new statute of limitation even without proving rape."

So, we can establish that Trump was not found "guilty" of rape as he was not criminally charged, nor was he found liable for rape. Further, the civil claim was on a battery tort but brought forward using an extension of the statute of limitations for crimes including rape.

That said, some have also commented that Trump was "convicted" of sexual abuse, such as Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, who wrote on Twitter that the GOP was now "The party of a *convicted* sexual abuser."

Again, there was no criminal conviction, only liability for battery based on the preponderance of evidence of sexual abuse. As Tidmarsh added, a conflation of civil liability and criminal guilt would be "legally wrong and dangerous."

"In no way would I say that this verdict by implication [or any other way] proves that Donald Trump was guilty [in the criminal sense] of sexual assault," he said. "The burden of proof for a crime [beyond a reasonable doubt] is higher than it is for a civil battery claim. We don't know what a criminal jury would have done with this evidence.

"So no, I would never extrapolate from this civil verdict of liability to say anything about what Donald Trump's criminal guilt might have been."

Newsweek has reached out to Swalwell for comment.

Tidmarsh's view was concurred by Cornell Law School professor Maggie Gardner, a scholar of civil procedure and international law, who told Newsweek that the jury's decision did not mean "that the proof is so overwhelming that a jury would have convicted [Trump] on criminal charges, we just don't know whether the evidence would have met that standard.

"The verdict also doesn't mean that Trump didn't rape Carroll. It might mean that the jury didn't believe the assault included penetration, or it could mean they weren't sure or found the evidence not as clear as that for assault, or it could be a compromise verdict."

Much has been discussed about what the result of the trial might be for Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign hopes. Legal experts and political commentators have suggested that Carroll could file a new defamation lawsuit against Trump after comments he made this week during a CNN town hall appearance.

During the broadcast, Trump said: "This is a fake story, made-up story. I have no idea who the hell she is. She's a wack job."

As Gardner told Newsweek, even if there was no criminal verdict, civil suits "play an important role in vindicating rights or telling important stories."

"Even though this was not a criminal verdict and even though the verdict did not extend to rape, the verdict tells us that a unanimous jury of Trump and Carroll's peers found her credible and found it more likely than not that Trump sexually assaulted her.

"It is also telling that the verdict came quickly. One thing we often forget is that a jury of our peers is so important that we have a constitutional right to such a jury in federal courts not just for criminal trials, but also for civil trials like this one."

In a response to Newsweek, Fell said he added to his post "Edit: They agree that he's a sexual assaulter, at least."

Newsweek has reached out to a Trump representative via email for comment.

The Ruling

False.

Trump was found, by a jury, liable for battery, a civil tort, based on the preponderance of evidence provided by E. Jean Carroll that he sexually abused her but not that he raped her.

He was not found "guilty" as the suit was a civil trial, which entails no criminal conviction.

If the evidence provided by Carroll was given to a criminal jury, it might have come to other conclusions. That it was not found at a civil trial (based on the preponderance of evidence) that he raped Carroll does not mean that a criminal trial would make the same conclusion, although the evidential standards would be higher.

Update 5/12/23, 11:12 a.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from James Fell.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team