After $5M Carroll Verdict, Trump Melts Down On Social Media
Hide the ketchup!
It took a jury less than three hours yesterday to find Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The panel returned a “no” verdict on the rape charge, since Carroll’s memory of whether Trump actually managed to achieve intercourse was somewhat hazy — a fact Trump’s supporters are desperately trying to spin as a win. But the jurors believed her account of the assault and imposed a $5 million penalty on the former president for his conduct in that long-ago dressing room and subsequent lies about his victim.
On the courthouse steps, attorney Joseph Tacopina vowed to appeal. Then Trump’s sparklemagic lawyer Alina Habba went on CNN to explain to Dana Bash why New York’s Adult Survivor law, enacted last year to extend the statute of limitations for victims to sue their abusers, is bad actually.
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“It’s indefensible! There are things called justice, and people have the right to go to courts and go to prisons and go to police officers,” she fumed, pointing to gaps in Carroll’s memory of the attack.
“You’re not allowed to do that. This is un-American. So this is not about rape victims, this is about politics,” she went on, adding that the verdict was “a sad thing” for rape victims.
In point of fact, you are “allowed to do that,” as the jury just demonstrated. Habba challenged the constitutionality of the Adult Survivors Act in this very case and lost. Although perhaps this attorney is not the world’s foremost expert on what is “allowed,” considering she just got clocked with a million dollars in sanctions to compensate opposing counsel for filing a RICO LOLsuit which “no reasonable lawyer would have filed” against Hillary Clinton and half of DC.
As former federal prosecutor and current Rottenberg, Lipman, Rich member Mitchell Epner explained (to me) on the Opening Arguments podcast, filing an appeal will force Trump to post a $5 million supersedeas bond with 9 percent statutory interest. In the likely event that he loses that appeal, Carroll will immediately get the money. But if Trump simply allowed the verdict to stand, he could force Carroll to dun him for it.
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On a press tour yesterday, Carroll and her attorney Roberta Kaplan vowed to collect the entire $5 million. Funnily enough, Kaplan will eventually claim a share of the supersedeas bond Trump posted in Florida (5.35 percent!) after appealing that sanctions order. The brief explaining grounds for the appeal in that case is due today — be there, will be wild.
And speaking of wild …
Yesterday Trump complained that he was “not allowed to speak or defend myself” and insisted that he would “appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome!” This was not a complaint about being blocked from appearing in court to defend himself, of course, since he was offered the opportunity to come in and testify, even after the parties had rested their cases, and he refused. This was about Judge Lewis Kaplan’s suggestion that Trump should knock it off with the social media posts about evidence excluded in the case. Because the former president appears to think that the First Amendment includes the right to tamper with the jury.
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Obviously he’s getting it all out of his system this morning, along with a fundraising screed about “the Marxists who orchestrated this witch hunt in a city where the voter registration of the jury pool favors Democrats 7:1.”
As Roberta Kaplan pointed out on MSNBC, Trump removed the case from state court, meaning that he was before a federal grand jury which drew largely from outside the city proper.
No doubt the Second Circuit will be deeply impressed with Trump’s attack on a federal judge, though. He should definitely keep that up as Tacopina and Habba work their magic in the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse.
Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
