After 25 Years, It's E. Jean Carroll's Turn To Grab Trump By The Process

Discover him where the sun don't shine.

Yesterday, almost three full years after advice columnist E. Jean Carroll filed a defamation suit against Donald Trump for saying she was a liar and too ugly to rape , the former president finally sat down for a deposition in the case. No doubt he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.

Or else he pled the Fifth like a mobster , refusing to answer any questions, as he's been doing a lot lately . And indeed, that is the right of every American and the most logical course of action for the former president, who clearly thought he could string this shit out forever and never have to pay a price.

Getting to this point was a major victory for Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan. Trump spent months ducking the process server, something he continues to do even this week with the New York Attorney General, and made various preposterous claims about being immune from civil suits as the sitting president. ( Ask Bill Clinton how that one ends.) On the eve of being forced by a New York state court to participate in discovery, Attorney General Bill Barr suddenly realized that Trump had been doing very serious president stuff when he called Carroll a liar and dismissed her claims as a hoax, and thus the case had to be removed to federal court under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Now, in a normal world, you don't give a shit about the FTCA — unless the government commits a tort against you, in which case, you care a lot. But as with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Donald Trump is forcing everyone to go to law school just to understand what the hell is happening on any given day, so here we are.

Under the FTCA, the government will be substituted as defendant in a tort claim against its employee if that employee was acting within the scope of her employment when the tort was committed. But the federal government has sovereign immunity, except in cases where it has explicitly waived it. And defamation is not one of those cases, so if Barr was successful in substituting US America as defendant here, Carroll's case would disappear.

A year ago, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump was not an employee of the executive branch, since, as the executive, he was effectively the boss of the whole thing. But, if he was an employee, the court found that he was not acting within the scope of his employment when he denied Carroll's allegations, and thus couldn't nope out and leave the government to magically disappear this case. Trump immediately appealed to the Second Circuit, which took its damn time thinking about it. While that was going on, Judge Kaplan ordered the parties to commence discovery.

As is his wont, Trump dragged his heels and basically refused to participate. Last month, the Second Circuit finally issued a hot mess of an order finding that the president was an employee of the federal government for purposes of the FTCA. But they failed to take a position on whether he was acting within the scope of his employment under DC law, instead punting the issue to the DC Court of Appeals. Trump's lawyers then demanded that discovery be halted pending a decision by the local jurists.

And perhaps if they hadn't spent three solid years being total assholes, the court would have granted the request. But in the event, Judge Kaplan declined to stay discovery , and in the most scathing terms possible.

Let's just say it is not a great sign for your client when the section of the order laying out the facts of the case begins "Mr. Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it.” And it didn't get better!

"Given his conduct so far in this case, Mr. Trump's position regarding the burdens of discovery is inexcusable," Judge Kaplan wrote, going on to note that Trump "has taken discovery against plaintiff when the circumstances were not materially different."

And in case it wasn't clear what that means, here's a fun excerpt from Carroll's objection to the stay, to make it clear how egregiously bad faith Trump's demand for delay is:

Moreover, Defendant has spent four months taking advantage of the very discovery process that he set in motion. He has obtained 30,469 pages of records from Plaintiff, obtained hundreds more pursuant to nonparty subpoenas, obtained 19 substantive interrogatory responses, and recently deposed a key nonparty witness. In contrast, Defendant produced just eight documents and four incomplete interrogatory responses; he otherwise stonewalled every document request and interrogatory, refused to turn over basic information about witnesses required by Local Civil 2 Rule 26.3(c)(3),1 and violated every deadline that applied to his discovery responses without any credible excuse for his failure. Throughout, Defendant has objected to discovery requests on the ground that it was “more practical” to obtain the information Plaintiff seeks at “a deposition”— and so Plaintiff finally had to schedule Defendant’s deposition for the first half of October.

And forgive us getting even deeper into the weeds here, but there's another important wrinkle in this case, because New York just passed the Adult Survivors Act , opening a one-year window for victims of sexual assault to sue their assailants. Carroll has already made clear that she intends to sue Trump under this law when it comes into effect next month, and that she anticipates it being heard by Judge Kaplan, since it involves the exact same alleged conduct.

Naturally Trump is handling this with all the judgment and gravitas he can muster — i.e. none. Over at his mommyblog, he put out a truly filthy statement repeating everything he said back in 2019 about Carroll.

"This 'Ms. Bergdorf Goodman' case is a complete con job, and our legal system in this Country, but especially in New York State (just look at Peekaboo James), is a broken disgrace," he began, making sure to throw in some racism in case anyone forgot what a degenerate bigot he is.

"It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!" he ranted.

Yes, there is a reason he's "not supposed to say it." And that reason is that it's fucking gross and it implies that he might have raped someone who was his type. But perhaps more importantly, as former prosecutor Barb McQuade pointed out to Vice , Trump is no longer the president, so, if Carroll wants to amend her case to add this latest statement to her complaint, he can't count on Bill Barr and the FTCA to ride to the rescue.

Okay, we are done here. Enough with this asshole.

[ Carroll v. Trump , Docket via Court Listener]

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