Appeals Court Panel To Trump: Pay E. Jean Carroll Her Money, Deadbeat!
Hero writer, 81, is the last plaintiff standing.
After 91 felony indictments, and half a billion in penalties in his New York business fraud trial, President Donald J. Trump has wriggled out of the consequences for almost every single criminal, fraudy, sex-assaulty thing he has ever done. But one plaintiff is still left standing! It’s shero E. Jean Carroll, 81, who remains undefeated. And on Monday a ruling by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan in the case known as Carroll I, on Monday found that Trump still owes her $83.3 million plus interest, for sexually assaulting and defaming her, and then defaming her some more.
The panel said no, that holy executive presidential immunity that the Supreme Court magically conjured up for Trump does not shield him from the “common law malice” with which he defamed Carroll, before and after he was president. And they agreed with the finding by the 2023 trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, that “the degree of reprehensibility of Mr. Trump’s conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented.” Particularly given how Trump has “never wavered or relented in his public attacks” on Carroll, has issued statements castigating her “as a politically and financially motivated liar, insinuating that she was too unattractive for him to have sexually assaulted her and threatening that she would ‘pay dearly’ for speaking out,” and even two days into the trial itself “proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’”
Trump Celebrates Iowa Caucus By Defaming E. Jean Carroll Some More (The Latest Trial Started Today)
And defame some more he did, even after being found liable for rape and defamation, and so Carroll sued him some more, and won some more. And in the meantime, she’s been living in a secluded cabin armed with guns, dogs, bows and arrows, and pepper spray, secretly working on another book that became a best-seller over the summer, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, a sparklingly detailed account of the trial from her point of view. A riveting read, and even better as an audiobook read in her own voice. It’s available with a Spotify subscription!
When will Carroll actually get that money? Trump is supposed to pay up within 14 days, but ha ha. He has surely already filed an en banc appeal for the whole appeals court to hear his holy executive president can do anything with no consequences appeal, and will then whine to the Supreme Court when he inevitably loses. There are two cases here, Carroll I and Carroll II. Carroll II went to trial first and was for $5 million, and then Carroll I was next. Because the first jury had already found Trump liable for assault, the second jury only had to figure out the amount Trump owed. And because Trump would not shut his yap defaming her, they decided he owed $83.3 million. So he gets to exhaust all of the appeals of both.
How long can he drag it out? At least months, or maybe even a year or more. There’s no small chance Carroll may never see the money in her lifetime, though she says if she dies first she is making sure that it will go to charities that he hates, like reproductive freedom, voting rights, and combating the climate crisis. “If Trump despises it, I’m gonna be giving money to it.”
So much has gone on since 2023, and now with all the Epstein Files talk, it’s like everybody has forgotten that the man who is now president of the United States was already found liable for sexual assault that a judge has said meets the definition of rape, even though the jurors could not figure out if he used a finger or his similarly girthed peen for penetration. And how he was also credibly accused of sexual assault of 25 other women, starting with his first wife, Ivana, in 1989.
And that rape and defamation trial in 2023 was sooo damning. He was defended by lunky, shouty Joe Tacopina, which itself was a tell! As Carroll reminds us in her book, Tacopina also worked to get off Michael Jackson and his co-conspirators on those kiddie-diddling charges (before Mark Geragos replaced him), got the alleged murderer of Natalee Holloway Joran Van Der Sloot extradited to the US from Peruvian hell prison, got A$AP Rocky off when he was charged with felony assault, and helped Alex Rodriguez avoid getting indicted for trying to buy stolen documents. Tacopina made his name as the go-to guy for sleazy famous men, and he managed to get all of them excellent results.
So it seemed the odds were against Carroll. She could not remember exactly when the assault happened. The jury was nine men and three women. One of the jurors in the first trial even got onto the jury after saying he got his news from Tim Poole, because Carroll’s lawyers thought that he said he got his news “from temple.” Tacopina trotted out the age-old gold-digging-nuts-n-sluts defense in his booming voice “like a cello in a rock quarry,” how Carroll was a liar, making the whole thing up, and just wanted money and fame. He badgered Carroll on the stand with a cross that sounded like it could have come from 1955.
Did you really fight back? Did you fight back hard enough? Why weren't you more traumatized? Why didn't you cry? Why didn't you scream or hit him harder? Why didn't you report it to the police? Why did you wait so long to speak up?
But even the Tim Poole listener was disgusted and found Trump liable anyway, because in his own deposition, old Pussgrab could not keep from incriminating himself.
He’d claimed E. Jean Carroll was “not his type,” then confused her with his second wife, Marla Maples.
He seethed at Carroll’s lawyer that she was not his type either, and then there was this regarding that Access Hollywood tape:
ROBERTA KAPLAN: And you say and again, this has become very famous in this video. “I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” That's what you said; correct?
TRUMP: Well, historically, that's true with stars.
KAPLAN: True with stars that they can grab women by the pussy?
TRUMP: Well, that's what if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.
KAPLAN: And you consider yourself to be a star?
TRUMP: I think you can say that, yeah.
And after these years and dozens of accusations, Trump’s response has never been that he wouldn’t do such a thing, would never rape a woman or child. Instead it’s she’s not my type, too ugly. Everybody’s a liar. Then-Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham was also deposed in the Carroll case, and that deposition is still sealed. But in Grisham’s own book she talked about how Trump told her to respond (in between openly ogling the rear ends of women who crossed his path): “Just deny it. That's what you do in every situation. Right, Stephanie? You just deny it.”
Another reminder, in Michael Wolff’s 2021 book Too Famous, Wolff wrote that Jeffrey Epstein claimed that Trump immediately called him up and “regaled” Epstein with “torrid details” of what passed between Trump and Carroll. But Carroll’s lawyers didn’t even try to get that evidence introduced, because it was hearsay from a dead man, and also were sure that the judge would rule that the “two words ‘Jeffrey Epstein’ are so flamingly prejudicial.”
Epstein predicted that Trump’s response, formulated with the help of Steve Bannon, would immediately be to start whatabouting Bill Clinton, and that’s exactly what Trump did. It’s been the same song for a decade. But the man’s a creep, he’s always been a creep, it’s obvious, he does not even really deny it, and it’s wild how apparently most of America just doesn’t care all that much.
E. Jean Carroll herself, though, is a lot less cynical than some of us. As far as she’s concerned, things are better than ever. Jessica Bennett in New York magazine:
I asked Carroll what it feels like to be living through a backlash; it was on my mind lately. But she countered immediately. We were living, she said, through the first time period “in a hideous human history” when we had at least a small inkling of how “chock-full of predators” the “rulers’ houses” are. “This is good, Jessica,” she said. “This is stunning.”
[New York Magazine archive link / PBS]
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I wish the Democrats exhibited a millionth of the guts she has.
Convo with a former co-worker
RC: "not voting for a guy who brags about sexual assault"
CW: "that's just how guys talk"
RC: "you mean how rapists talk"
CW: "mumble mumble"