Trump's lawyers say an accuser's sexual-assault testimony should have been tossed because the incident was aboard an airplane

• Trump showed up for an appeal in the case that found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.
• Friday's arguments focused on whether it was OK for the jury to hear about groping on a plane.
• Trump's lawyers say different laws and rules apply to airplane sexual assault.

Donald Trump actually showed up this time.

The 2024 Republican presidential nominee appeared in a Manhattan federal appeals court on Friday to watch the oral arguments in the appeal of a jury verdict finding him liable for sexual abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Much of the arguments — on the 17th floor of a Manhattan federal courthouse — focused on whether sexual-assault testimony from one witness in the trial should have been tossed because she alleges the assault took place on an airplane.

John Sauer, Trump's lawyer in the Friday arguments, said the jury should have never heard evidence from Jessica Leeds, who testified that Trump groped her on a plane in the 1970s .

Leeds testified that when Trump ran into her a couple of years later, he recalled her as "that cunt from the airplane."

Leeds' allegations weren't part of Carroll's accusations, but the trial judge allowed her testimony because they demonstrated what Carroll's lawyers argued was a pattern of behavior by Trump.

But Sauer said the testimony should have been "inadmissible" because the alleged events were under "territorial or maritime jurisdiction" and different rules of evidence applied.

The three judges on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel hearing the case seemed largely skeptical of the arguments.

US Circuit Judge Denny Chin appeared doubtful it would make sense to "order a new trial" based on the arguments.

"It's very hard to overturn a jury verdict for evidentiary grounds," he said.

Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan said there was no "special aircraft jurisdiction" that would have led to the exclusion of Leeds' testimony.

"It was a crime to grope someone on a plane," she said. "It is a crime to grope someone on a plane."

Trump — who did not testify or even show up to the trial for the case — said in a press conference at Trump Tower later Friday morning that if he were to have groped a woman on a plane, Leeds "would not have been the chosen one."

"It couldn't have happened, it didn't happen, and she would not have been the chosen one," he said. "She would not have been the chosen one," he repeated.

"I assume she'll sue me now for defamation," he added, after continuing to deny that he sexually assaulted Leeds.

Trump didn't show up to the trial

Trump skipped the trial for the case , which took place in the spring of 2023. The jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.

After suffering the court loss, Trump did attend nearly all of a second trial, in January, which focused on additional defamation damages .

His lead attorney in the January trial, Alina Habba, frequently sparred with the case's judge . Trump himself walked out of the courtroom in the middle of closing arguments from Kaplan.

The jury in the second trial ordered the former president to pay Carroll another $83 million in damages for repeatedly calling her a liar and disparaging her appearance while denying the sexual assault.

Carroll attended each day of both trials, as well as Friday's arguments. Kaplan declined to comment after the hearing.

The appeal's oral arguments were held in a courthouse across the street from where the two Carroll v. Trump trials took place.

Trump brought much of his expansive legal team with him on Friday. In addition to Sauer, who made the oral arguments, he had the attorneys Todd Blanche, Emil Bove, and Habba in tow. Two advisors, Boris Epshteyn and Joshua Katz, hung back at the same large table in the courtroom well.

In court, he didn't speak out of turn. He surveyed the journalists and members of the public when he entered the courtroom at 9:55 a.m., wearing a familiar scowl. Trump was stone-faced in his seat throughout the 23 minutes of argument, even when Carroll's lawyer recounted vivid details of the sexual-abuse testimony.

Carroll brought her sexual-abuse lawsuit against Trump using the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that opened a window allowing for civil sexual-misconduct claims that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.

Carroll alleged that in the mid-1990s Trump cornered her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, a short walk from Trump Tower. In harrowing testimony for both trials, she described how his "curved finger" penetrated her without her consent. Two of Carroll's friends testified that she told them about the incident shortly after it took place.

Trump's lawyers have argued that the verdict in the first trial should be tossed. In an appeal brief, Blanche and Bove — who also represent Trump in a slew of other cases — borrowed arguments from Harvey Weinstein's successful appeal in his New York criminal case , namely that accusers who weren't part of the case shouldn't have been allowed to testify.

Sauer argued that Trump's case was "a textbook example" of a case wrongly propped up by propensity evidence rather than Trump's actual conduct.

"It's a quintessential he-said-she-said case," he said.

The judges didn't appear to be convinced. US Circuit Judge Susan Carney mused about whether the verdict could stand when considering the "outcry witnesses" to whom Carroll disclosed her story.

Legal experts — including Weinstein's own lawyers — previously told BI that the argument had a slim chance of success. Federal courtroom rules are more lenient when it comes to the testimony of "propensity witnesses" who help establish a pattern of behavior, particularly when it comes to civil cases.

"In these civil cases, you can certainly show a pattern, and that's basically what's happening, especially when you have a perpetrator with multiple alleged victims," Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who helped write the Adult Survivors Act, told BI before Friday's arguments.

On Friday, Kaplan emphasized that the ordinary rules were followed during the trial.

"Despite the prominence of this case and the personalities involved, this is really about a routine application of federal rules of evidence," she said.

She also jabbed at Habba's earlier claims that she might have some kind of conflict of interest with the trial judge, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

"Just for the record, we are not related, and he is not my mentor," she said.

Trump is racing to clear away many of his legal problems ahead of the November presidential election, where he's facing off against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Earlier this year, Sauer won a resounding victory before the US Supreme Court in one of Trump's criminal cases. The court recognized far-reaching presidential immunity that delivered a significant setback to the Washington, DC-based criminal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump didn't show up to those oral arguments either, in part because he was in another Manhattan courtroom during a trial for a different criminal case; in that case, a jury found him guilty of falsifying business documents as part of a different election-interference scheme in 2016.

Blanche and Bove, who also represent him in the Manhattan criminal case, have cited the US Supreme Court ruling to fight the verdict in that case as well. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, is expected to decide on Friday whether he will once again delay Trump's sentencing, which is scheduled for September 18.

Presidential immunity played a role in earlier court fights in the Carroll case. A 2nd Circuit panel previously ruled that Trump waived any presidential-immunity protections and could not argue that they applied as he disparaged Carroll from the White House.

In an interview with BI after the verdict in her first trial last year, Carroll said she'd heard from hundreds of people that her court verdict gave them hope that they could hold their own abusers accountable.

"They think, 'Well, if the former president of the United States can be held liable for sexual abuse, well then maybe my stepfather, maybe my old boss, maybe my ex-boyfriend, maybe that man who lived down the street — maybe I can hold them accountable for ruining my life,'" Carroll told BI.