Government

Trump Attempt To Grab 'Em By The Abuse Of Discretion Fails At Second Circuit

E. Jean Carroll is undefeated.

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Donald Trump Campaigns In The Swing State Of Wisconsin

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

This morning the Second Circuit affirmed once again that the incoming president is a serial sexual abuser of women, with “a pattern of abrupt, nonconsensual, and physical advances on women he barely knew.” The court refused to overturn the jury verdict in Carroll II, the defamation and abuse case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who was sexually assaulted by the once and future president.

Trump’s lawyers John Sauer, Todd Blanche, and Emil Bove (the future solicitor general and top two deputies at the DOJ) turned in their usual pile of incendiary gobbledygook, claiming, for example, that “President Trump himself did not attend the trial given the fact there was absolutely no physical evidence in support of Plaintiff’s claims and the only direct evidence of liability was the incredible testimony from Plaintiff who failed to provide a month or even year when this supposed event took place.”

In reality, Trump’s trial lawyer Joe Tacopina was desperate to keep him out of the courtroom, aware of his client’s effect on a jury. Indeed, in the second case, Carroll I, which was delayed thanks to Trump’s two-year quest to claim he was just doing his presidential duty when he said Carroll was too unattractive to assault, the defendant did show up in court. There the verdict was $83 million, as compared to the $5 million from the first trial.

But Trump’s claims on appeal — even the ones that didn’t blatantly distort the record — were little more than halfhearted gestures in the direction of an argument. He claimed (again) that it was error to admit testimony by Jessica Leeds, who says that he attempted to sexually assault her on an airplane, because somehow propensity evidence doesn’t count unless you’re on the ground.

“Mr. Trump’s reading is wholly inconsistent with the rationale advanced in Congress in adopting Rules 413-415, which centered on the nature of the other conduct, not the specific location in which the conduct occurred,” the three-judge panel countered.

Trump insisted that Natasha Stoynoff should not have been allowed to testify that he threw her up against the wall and kissed her, ignoring her protest and only stopping when a butler walked in, because it’s not sexual assault until you try to touch the victim’s genitals.

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“That the alleged assault showed no signs of terminating until a third party interrupted it also supports the conclusion that a jury could have reasonably found that Mr. Trump intended to bring his body into contact with Ms. Stoynoff’s genitals and that he took substantial steps toward doing so,” the court scoffed.

The “Access Hollywood” tape was properly admitted because, “The jury could have reasonably concluded from those statements that, in the past, Mr. Trump had kissed women without their consent and then proceeded to touch their genitalia.” And the lack of DNA testing on the dress was appropriately excluded, “especially considering that the pretrial discovery period had closed by the time Mr. Trump offered to provide a DNA sample, and both parties had had ample time to develop DNA as an issue, yet both had failed to do so.”

In short, there was no abuse of discretion, and Trump has to pay Carroll the $5 million. Of course John, Clarence, Sam, Brett, and Neil haven’t weighed in yet, so the most important jury’s still out on whether, when you’re a star, they really just let you do it.

Carroll v. Trump [Appellate Docket via Court Listener]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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