Donald Trump filed a notice Tuesday which states his attention to appeal his loss this week in a New York City civil trial—which found him liable for sexual battery and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
The notice, filed in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, serves as a precursor for an incoming formal appeal.
After a two-week civil trial in federal court, the jury hit Trump with a $5 million judgement after it determined that the former president sexually abused Carroll in a Manhattan dressing room in the mid-1990s, then spent years defaming her after the fact.
Trump continues to deny the jury’s findings, sharing a an all-caps post to Truth Social on Tuesday where he called the verdict a “DISGRACE” and claimed that he has “ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS.”
Less than two days later, Trump did more of the same, going as far as to call Carroll a “wack job” during his controversial appearance on a CNN town hall Wednesday.
“She wasn’t raped, OK?” he said. “And I didn’t do anything else either, OK, because I don’t know who the hell she is.”
Trump’s notice of appeal was filed just hours after Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, filed a written ruling endorsing the jury’s verdict.
The decision to appeal comes as no surprise—Trump and his legal team had previously indicated their intentions to continue fighting the case.
Trump and his posse have also repeatedly argued that the former president cannot get a fair trial—for both a criminal indictment surrounding his alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and the civil case—in New York City because of his polarizing politics.
Joe Tacopina, Trump’s attorney, hammered that point home in his closing argument earlier this week.
“People have very strong feelings about Donald Trump. That’s obvious,” Tacopina said. “There’s a time and a secret place to do that: it’s called a ballot box during an election.”
Despite the results of the trial, Trump’s status as a 2024 presidential candidate remains unchanged.
In fact, with a big polling lead over other Republican hopefuls, Trump appears more confident than ever. At Wednesday’s town hall, he was asked what he would tell voters who believe the verdict should disqualify him from the presidency.
“Well, there aren’t too many of them because my poll numbers just came out,” he said. “They went up.”
