CNN’s Daniel Dale Fact Checks Trump’s Rant After E. Jean Carroll Appeal Hearing: ‘A Jury of His Peers Disagreed’

CNN reporter Daniel Dale fact checked Donald Trump’s remarks following an appeal court hearing over the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Last year, Carroll sued Trump over her claims he sexually assaulted in a department store in the 1990s and defamed her when she accused publicly during his presidency. A New York jury ruled in Carroll’s favor and ordered Trump to pay her $5 million while finding him liable for sexual abuse, followed by a later verdict in a related case with a different NY jury for $83.3 million .

On Friday, a three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals listened to arguments from Trump’s legal team for less than a half-hour. All three of the judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Trump claimed during his remarks to the press that the defamation case against him was orchestrated by the Biden administration via the Department of Justice. Dale fact checked those claims during a discussion with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer .

So first of all, these claims that he’s been making for many months now, that every single case against him, including a civil fraud case brought by the New York State attorney general and two local criminal cases brought by district attorneys were all orchestrated by the Department of Justice — simply baseless. Again, he’s been saying those for months. There is no evidence whatsoever. He’s certainly presented none. And none of those officials even report to the Department of Justice, let alone President Biden or Vice President Harris, whom he’s also specifically accused of bringing these cases.

He keeps saying that he’s leading in the polls. You can find individual polls in which he leads in some swing states or nationally. But in terms of polling averages, as our numbers guru Harry Enten has repeatedly demonstrated, he’s currently down. He trails in in those polling averages to Vice President Harris.

And then I think on these claims, Wolf, about E. Jean Carroll against whom he was found liable, we should say that liable, not convicted in a criminal trial, of sexual abuse and defamation. This is the same stuff he’s been saying over and over. I guess he’s entitled to assert his innocence, so I won’t purport to fact check it. But I will note that again, a jury simply disagreed. A jury found him liable for sexually abusing Miss Carroll of defaming Miss Carroll, and he’s repeating many of the claims over which he was found liable for defamation today so he can say it but a jury of his peers disagreed.

Watch the clip above via CNN .