NEW YORK (NewsNation) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump presented arguments in a New York City courtroom Friday to overturn the decision holding him liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Trump didn’t acknowledge Caroll or look at her as he passed right in front of her on the way in and out, but he shook his head at points, such as when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.

He watched as one of his attorneys, D. Joh Sauer, told a panel of three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.

“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that the jury was allowed to consider such items as the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted years ago about grabbing women’s genitals.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, said the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago.

“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.

The three-judge panel said they’d consider the arguments before concluding the hearing. The court is unlikely to issue a ruling before November’s presidential election.

‘I have no idea who she is’: Trump

After the hearing, Trump reiterated his previous claims that he’s never met Carroll and that she fabricated the story about being attacked to sell a new book.

“It’s an appeal of a ridiculous verdict of a woman I have never met. I don’t know. I have no idea who she is. She wrote a book and made a ridiculous story up. She put it in her book and we’re now appealing the decision,” Trump said.

Jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million

Caroll claims Trump attacked her in a department store dressing room in 1996. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million last year.

Trump, who has denied attacking Carroll, did not attend the May 2023 trial and has expressed regret he was not there.

In January, a second jury found Trump liable in the case and the panel awarded Carroll another $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump made about her while he was president, finding they were defamatory. At the time, Trump called the ruling “a disgrace” and vowed to appeal.

Trump testified for less than three minutes at the trial and was not permitted to refute conclusions reached by the May 2023 jury. In April, the judge rejected Trump’s bid for a new trial.

E. Jean Carroll’s testimony

Carroll, 80, testified during both trials that her life as an Elle magazine columnist was spoiled by Trump’s public comments, which she said ignited such hate against her that she received death threats and feared going outside the upstate New York cabin where she lives.

Lawyers for Trump said in court papers that he deserves a new trial in part because the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, permitted two other women to testify about similar acts of sex abuse they say Trump committed against them in the 1970s and in 2005.

They also argued that Kaplan wrongly disallowed evidence that Carroll lied during her deposition, and other evidence they say would reveal bias and motives to lie for Carroll and other witnesses against Trump. The verdict, they wrote, was “unjust and erroneous,” resulting from “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary rulings.”

Trump’s lawyers also challenged repeated airing at trial of an “Access Hollywood” videotape from 2005 in which Trump is heard saying that he sometimes just starts kissing beautiful women and “when you’re a star they let you do it.” He also said that a star can grab women’s genitals because “You can do anything.”

In their written arguments, Carroll’s lawyers said Trump was wrongly demanding “a do-over” based on unfounded “sweeping complaints of unfairness” and other “distortions of the record, misstatements or misapplications of the law, and a steadfast disregard of the district court’s reasoning.”

NewsNation digital producer Rich Johnson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.