Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, jury says

[bobalot]

Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, jury says

A civil jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York department store in the 1990s, and for defaming her last fall when he denied her claim.

The jury of six men and three women also ordered Trump to pay Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages after deliberating less than three hours in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Jurors notably did not find Trump liable for rape, the most serious allegation Carroll made in a lawsuit filed last year.

But their verdict that he sexually abused and forcibly touched her without her consent during a chance encounter in the Bergdorf Goodman store substantiated her civil claim of battery. Trial in the case began on April 25.

“I filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and to get my life back,” Carroll, 79, said in a statement Tuesday.

“Today, the world finally knows the truth,” said Carroll, a former “Elle” magazine advice columnist and biographer of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

“This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”

Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, in her own statement, said, “No one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States.”

“For far too long, survivors of sexual assault faced a wall of doubt and intimidation,” Kaplan added. We hope and believe today’s verdict will be an important step in tearing that wall down.”

Trump, who neither testified at trial nor ever appeared in court, blasted the verdict in a post on Truth Social, his social media site.

“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is,” the 76-year-old Trump wrote. “This verdict is a disgrace.”

His lawyer Joseph Tacopina told CNBC, “Her claim was that she was raped and the jury rejected it. Perplexing to say the least.”

“Obviously we will be appealing,” said Tacopina.

He noted that Judge Lewis Kaplan, the trial judge who is not related to Roberta Kaplan, last year had a key ruling overturned by a federal appeals court in another, similar pending lawsuit by Carroll against Trump.

“We expect it to happen again,” the attorney said.

The other lawsuit alleges Trump defamed Carroll when she went public with her claim of rape in a 2019 New York magazine article.

At the time, Trump was president, and questions about whether he can be held liable for defamatory statements while serving in that official position have for years effectively stalled that case.

The trial’s result Tuesday is the latest — but possibly not the last — legal blow against Trump, who leads early polls for the 2024 GOP nomination.

In late March he was indicted by a Manhattan state Supreme Court grand jury on nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

Trump also faces pending federal criminal investigations related to his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, and to his failure to surrender government documents when he left the White House in early 2021.

And he faces possible indictment by a Georgia grand jury this summer for his attempt to get officials in that state to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory there in the 2020 election.

Georgia was one of several swing states that gave Biden his margin of victory in the Electoral College.

Trump cannot be prosecuted for the alleged rape of Carroll because the statute of limitations for such a crime has long since passed.

But Carroll sued him with a civil claim of battery under a New York state law enacted in late 2022 that opened a one-year window for lawsuits alleging sexual assaults which otherwise would be barred by the statute of limitations.

Carroll also claimed that Trump defamed her last fall when he said she had made up her account of being raped.

Trump at the time called her allegations “a complete con job,” and said that she was not his “type.”

Despite that claim, Trump in a deposition for the case taken by Robert Kaplan last fall mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples in a photo showing him and Carroll together in the 1980s.

Portions of a video of his deposition were played for jurors during the trial, and during closing arguments on Monday.

That deposition included Trump being asked about his comments in 2005 during a taping for the entertainment television show “Access Hollywood,” in which he boasted: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet.”

“Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said on that tape.

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said, including “grab ’em by the p----.”

Trump told Carroll’s lawyer during the deposition that those comments were “locker room talk.”

But he also said it has been “historically ... true with stars” that they could grab women without their permission.

“If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Trump testified at the time.

“Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”

When Carroll took the witness stand two weeks ago she testified, “I’m here because Trump raped me.”

Carroll recounted running into Trump and chatting with him late one afternoon at Bergdorf Goodman, where he recognized her as an advice columnist.

She testified that when they ended up in the store’s lingerie department, he ushered her into a dressing room, where he shoved her against a wall and sexually assaulted her.

Two friends of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Marin, testified she had told them soon afterward that Trump had raped her.

Two other women testified that Trump had kissed and groped them without their consent in incidents that occurred years apart.

A spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign said of Tuesday’s verdict, “The Democratic Party’s never-ending witch-hunt of President Trump hit a new low today.”

“In jurisdictions wholly controlled by the Democratic Party our nation’s justice system is now compromised by extremist left-wing politics,” the spokesman said in a statement.

“Make no mistake, this entire bogus case is a political endeavor targeting President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be once again elected President of the United States.”

But Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol that while the jury verdict does not necessarily have any effect on Trump’s candidacy, “The fact is, I do not think he could win the presidency.”

“He’s got a solid supportive base, but you can’t win a general election with just your base,” Cornyn said, according to NBC News. “So you have to appeal to a broader spectrum of people and he just never seems to try to do that. So to me, that’s the reason why I don’t think he can get elected.”

Source

[Elfdart]

Jurors notably did not find Trump liable for rape, the most serious allegation Carroll made in a lawsuit filed last year.

One of the callers to John Fugelsang's show on SiriusXM offered a very plausible explanation:

The jury might have decided that it wasn't rape if she wasn't actually penetrated and given that Stormy Daniels has described the pee-pee of Il Douchebag as being oh so tiny, maybe the victim couldn't tell for certain.

Either way, I hope that in addition to the >$5 million in punitive/compensatory damages Carroll stands to gain,that Trump has to pay her legal fees -especially if they're enormous.

[Ralin]

The jury might have decided that it wasn't rape if she wasn't actually penetrated and given that Stormy Daniels has described the pee-pee of Il Douchebag as being oh so tiny, maybe the victim couldn't tell for certain.

I'm going off summaries because I didn't watch, but she testified that she couldn't tell if he used his penis or his finger. I don't know the legal definition of rape being used in that jurisdiction, but that could have made the difference.

[Zaune]

God I hope so. I mean, the ideal outcome would have been Trump doing time and having his name on the sex offenders register but knowing he only escaped conviction because of that... Well, if nothing else the look on his face must have been some consolation to his victim.

[Ralin]

God I hope so. I mean, the ideal outcome would have been Trump doing time and having his name on the sex offenders register but knowing he only escaped conviction because of that... Well, if nothing else the look on his face must have been some consolation to his victim.

Civil case, not criminal

[bilateralrope]

Well, if nothing else the look on his face must have been some consolation to his victim.

Trump stayed away from the trial. He didn't show up to watch it unfold. Which is a choice he was allowed to make when nobody called him as a witness.

One thing his lawyers filed before the trial was a request for a jury instruction to not draw an adverse inference from his absence. Which the judge rejected.

[bilateralrope]

E Jean Carroll considering new lawsuit against Donald Trump over his disparaging CNN remarks

Molly Crane-Newman and Dave Goldiner
15:55, May 12 2023

E. Jean Carroll is considering new claims against Donald Trump after he once again slandered on prime-time television the woman he sexually abused.

At a Trump campaign rally-style “town hall” on Wednesday (Thursday NZT) on CNN, Trump repeated remarks that formed the basis of Carroll’s successful defamation claim, telling news anchor Kaitlan Collins that Carroll was a “wack job” who fabricated the assault – which was met with whistles and cheers by the Republican audience.

During the interview, Trump insulted well-respected Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over his case.

Asked whether she was considering more legal action in light of Trump’s latest remarks, Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the New York Daily News she was “thinking about it”.

Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina declined to comment.

In an exclusive interview with The New York Times, which first reported Carroll was considering a new claim, the longtime advice columnist said she didn’t watch Trump on CNN but read a transcript of his remarks.

“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Carroll said, telling the paper she had been “insulted by better people”.

“I am upset on the behalf of young men in America,” Carroll said. “They cannot listen to this balderdash and this old-timey view of women, which is a cave-man view.”

Carroll, 79, won her civil battery and defamation lawsuit against Trump on Monday following a two-week trial in which she presented 11 witnesses.

A jury took less than three hours to award her US$5 million (NZ$7.98m) in finding Trump liable for sexually abusing her on an unoccupied floor of a Midtown department store in the mid-1990s and defaming her decades later when she came forward.

Jurors heard graphic testimony about the assault inside Bergdorf, in their verdict finding Carroll had suffered severely due to it and Trump’s harassment campaign decades later.

Also on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal in Manhattan federal court. They are expected to file it in New York’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in the coming months.

Trump also did himself no legal favours by discussing taking classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election at the CNN town hall.

Instead of dodging questions about the scandals, Trump made potentially damaging admissions on both cases while trying to defend himself in front of a national TV audience.

Federal and state prosecutors including special counsel Jack Smith are investigating Trump’s role in both cases, making it foolhardy for him to speak openly and potentially give them more ammunition.

On the documents case, he admitted that he intentionally took classified documents with him when he left the White House.

“I didn’t make a secret of it,” Trump told Collins. “You know, the boxes were stationed outside the White House, people were taking pictures of it.”

That statement effectively contradicts his own lawyers who have claimed the classified documents might have inadvertently been mixed up with other personal documents.

Trump also said he might have shown the documents to others, confirming a key fear of prosecutors and national security experts.

“Not really ... not that I can think of,” he said, brushing off those concerns.

Trump sought to defend his actions by repeating his claim that he had every right to declassify any documents he wants and do whatever he wants with them.

Even if he believed that dubious legal claim were true, showing them to others would likely still be a crime, experts say.

At the very least, it would be wise to not openly discuss such potential law-breaking.

On the election interference front, Trump emphatically defended his extremist supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 and vowed to pardon almost all of them who have been convicted of federal crimes.

That could offer Smith more proof of Trump’s motive in instructing his loyal followers to “fight like hell” to keep him in power during a fiery speech that sparked the attack.

Trump also framed his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a way that could hurt him in court.

The former president said he called Raffensperger to bully him into “finding” enough votes because the Republican election official “owed him votes” because of Trump’s false claims that the Peach state election was rigged.

Trump’s transactional description of the call and his push to overturn his loss in Georgia is likely to be fodder for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as she probes Trump’s effort.

Indictments are expected this summer, although Willis has not said if she will charge Trump.

Trump really doesn't know when to shut up.

[LadyTevar]

E Jean Carroll considering new lawsuit against Donald Trump over his disparaging CNN remarks

(snip)

Trump really doesn't know when to shut up.

Nope.
And I hope she DOES sue him for doubling down on his remarks. Double that win to $10mil, see if he'll learn to sit down and shut up then.

[Gandalf]

That was effectively five million worth of free persecution publicity, so this could help a lot in the primaries.

[Ralin]

You think he's going to pay the five million?

[bilateralrope]

You think he's going to pay the five million?

He's going to appeal it as far as he can. After that it's either he pays, or he gets hit with a contempt of court punishment large enough to make him pay.

[LadyTevar]

You think he's going to pay the five million?

He's going to appeal it as far as he can. After that it's either he pays, or he gets hit with a contempt of court punishment large enough to make him pay.

No, I really think he doesn't have the money to pay.

[bilateralrope]

You think he's going to pay the five million?

He's going to appeal it as far as he can. After that it's either he pays, or he gets hit with a contempt of court punishment large enough to make him pay.

No, I really think he doesn't have the money to pay.

That's a way out of paying that will work.

Though declaring bankruptcy might cause him trouble getting lawyers to defend him in the various criminal cases.

[Ralin]

Or he becomes president again.

[LadyTevar]

Or he becomes president again.

GODS forbid.

I would very much like to see him lose enough court cases to be banned from running.

[bilateralrope]

Or he becomes president again.

GODS forbid.

I would very much like to see him lose enough court cases to be banned from running.

I'm not sure if banning him from running is an option unless he commits a capital offense.

Though if he's incarcerated, even under house arrest, that would prevent him holding rallies. So a formal ban might not be needed.

[Ralin]

I would very much like to see him lose enough court cases to be banned from running.

Not to be a downer, but so far they seem to be giving him more publicity and chances to look tough by thumbing his nose at the courts and laughing off damage awards. You don't get banned from running by losing lawsuits.

[bobalot]

Chances of being President again are lower than in 2020.

[bilateralrope]

I would very much like to see him lose enough court cases to be banned from running.

Not to be a downer, but so far they seem to be giving him more publicity and chances to look tough by thumbing his nose at the courts and laughing off damage awards. You don't get banned from running by losing lawsuits.

Until the criminal cases start getting convictions.

[Ralin]

Until the criminal cases start getting convictions.

Some of them had better hurry up then.

[bilateralrope]

Until the criminal cases start getting convictions.

Some of them had better hurry up then.

The DA in Georgia has said she plans to announce her charging decision between July 11 and September 1.

As for Jack Smith, his investigation was rather quiet last week. No filings, no witnesses before the grand jury that anyone noticed. The few people he hasn't called might be targets of his investigation. So all the speculation I'm hearing is that he's going quiet because he's about to drop big indictments.

[bilateralrope]

Donald Trump sues E. Jean Carroll for defamation

By Kara Scannell, CNN
Updated 8:04 AM EDT, Wed June 28, 2023


Donald Trump has sued E. Jean Carroll for defamation after a jury found he sexually abused the former magazine columnist and defamed her.

In a counter claim filed Tuesday night, Trump alleges that Carroll defamed him when she appeared on CNN the morning after the jury awarded her $5 million in damages. Carroll was asked about the verdict finding Trump sexually abused Carroll but did not rape her as she alleged. Carroll said, “Oh, yes he did.”

In response to the new claim, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said in a statement, “Donald Trump again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll.”

She added, “Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E. Jean Carroll. But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon.

The counter claim is the latest legal salvo in a multi-year legal battle between Trump and Carroll. Carroll first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied her allegation that he raped her in the mid-1990s in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman. Trump said he didn’t know Carroll and that she wasn’t his type.

She sued him again last year under a New York law that allowed a one-year window for civil lawsuits for survivors of sexual assault no matter when they occurred. Trump has moved for a new trial.

The 2019 defamation lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial next year, although there are still several legal issues outstanding. Carroll is seeking more than $10 million in damages in that case in part because Trump repeated statements the jury found to be defamatory after the verdict on social media and at a CNN town hall.

Looks like Trump wants to make this as painful for Carroll as he can.

[Ralin]

Looks like Trump wants to make this as painful for Carroll as he can.

More like he's daring a judge to smack him down in this case.

[Broomstick]

Or he becomes president again.

GODS forbid.

I would very much like to see him lose enough court cases to be banned from running.

Unfortunate, the one rules about being the PotUS is that you are over 35 and a born citizen.

No amount of court cases will bar him from running. No number of convictions will bar him from running.

This was, I assume, and oversight on the part of the people who wrote the constitution.

I'm not sure if banning him from running is an option unless he commits a capital offense.

Nope, that wouldn't bar him from running, either.

[bilateralrope]

Unfortunate, the one rules about being the PotUS is that you are over 35 and a born citizen.

No amount of court cases will bar him from running. No number of convictions will bar him from running.

This was, I assume, and oversight on the part of the people who wrote the constitution.

My guess is that they figured anyone who is that bad will be unelectable.