Donald Trump Warms Up For Criminal Trials By Getting His Ass Kicked In Civil Cases

Getting spanked by judges — it's a weird fetish.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Donald Trump had a rough day in two New York courts yesterday, although probably not as rough as he will have in DC and Georgia. We’ll call this an appetizer, shall we?

It started in federal court in Manhattan, where Judge Lewis Kaplan granted partial summary judgment to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in her second defamation suit against the former president. The case has taken a circuitous path through four separate courts, but is finally set to go to trial in January.

In 2019, Carroll wrote a book in which she accused the then-president of sexually assaulting her in the mid-’90s in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store. Trump not only denied it, but he called Carroll a liar and claimed that she was participating in a Democratic hoax. She filed a defamation suit that year in New York state court (Carroll I), after which Trump screwed around for six months ducking the process server and claiming that a president is immune from civil suits — which would be news to Bill Clinton, whom the Supreme Court forced to sit for a deposition in the Paula Jones case.

When the New York courts finally ordered Trump to comply with discovery, Attorney General Bill Barr swooped in to save Trump’s orange bacon by removing the case to federal court under the Westfall Act, which substitutes the government as defendant when a government employee is sued for conduct undertaken as part of his official duties. (Yes, this is what Mark Meadows is attempting to do in Fulton County.)

Because the government hasn’t waived sovereign immunity for defamation claims — that is, agreed to be sued — allowing Uncle Sam to stand in for Trump would have mooted the case. But Judge Kaplan said Trump wasn’t acting within the scope of his official duties and the president was anyway not a federal employee. Trump appealed to the Second Circuit, which said the president was a federal employee, but passed the case to the DC Court of Appeals to determine as a question of DC law whether Trump was acting within the scope of his employment when he implied that Carroll was too unattractive to sexually assault.

In April of 2023, the DC Court finally produced its Solomonic edict, and it was, “Well, it depends.” More or less. Basically they set out the rubric for determining scope of employment under DC law, sent it back to Judge Kaplan, and said it was a question for the trier of fact. Then the Justice Department cleared its throat and said, “Uh, now that we read the DC ruling, we’d like to revise our position and stop trying to take Trump’s place as defendant. Turns out, slagging private citizens who say stuff about you is not part of the president’s job. Who knew!” Again, we paraphrase.

But in the meantime, two important things happened. The first was that Donald Trump spent the intervening four years running his stupid mouth, repeating the same horrible shit he’d said about Carroll back in 2019. Only this time he wasn’t in the White House, so he could hardly claim that he was doing it as part of his job. This was part of the reason the DOJ tapped out, since talking the same shit as a private citizen was pretty good evidence that Trump was doing it because of “personal animus,” not presidential obligation.

The second was that New York passed the Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which gave victims of sexual assault a year to bring tort claims which would otherwise be time barred because the statute of limitations had passed. In November of 2022, Carroll filed a second suit (Carroll II) in federal court alleging sexual battery under the ASA and defamation in a 357-word screed Trump posted on social media repeating what he’d said in 2019.

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

In May, a jury found Trump liable in Carroll II, awarding Carroll $2 million on the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for the October 2022 defamation. Carroll immediately turned around and filed a motion for summary judgment in Carroll I, citing the principal of collateral estoppel. Essentially, she argued that, in light of the jury’s verdict, Trump is now estopped from denying the he sexually assaulted Carroll. The jury said he did, and that’s now the law of the case, i.e. a fact. Moreover, since the 2019 statement and the 2022 statement are substantially the same, and the jury held that the 2022 statement is defamatory, Trump can’t now argue that the 2019 statement is not defamatory. And so, she argued, the court should grant her summary judgment allowing her to go to trial solely on the issue of damages.

And yesterday, the court agreed.

“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends – like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement – on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her,” Judge Kaplan wrote. “The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”

This means that the only issue for the jury is how big a check Trump will have to write. And meanwhile, back in New York state court, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has also had it up to here with Trump and his dilatory tactics.

The former president is set to go to trial on October 2 in the civil suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James alleging that Trump and his eponymous company regularly produced false financial statements to banks and tax authorities. Trump’s sons filed a flurry of motions last week accusing AG James of advancing various improper legal theories and demanding that the court postpone the trial so that Deej and his kid brother could take an immediate appeal to argue some more about it. The AG responded by moving to sanction them for filing the same motions over and over in an attempt to delay trial. That sanctions motion is still pending, but Justice Engoron will not be putting this trial off so Don and Eric can come in and whine some more.

In a handwritten denial scrawled across the pleading, he wrote, “Decline to sign; Defendant’s arguments are completely without merit.”

Womp womp, you lose, go to trial, and then to jail.

[Carroll v. Trump I, Docket via Court Listener / Carroll v. Trump II, Docket via Court Listener]

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