Just a few months ago, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll made history by winning a civil battery and defamation suit against former President Donald Trump for sexually abusing her in the 1990s, and ruthlessly defaming her character in some 2022 statements after she came forward, for which he was ordered to pay her $5 million. Now, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Trump has, in fact, committed additional libel against Carroll, and will be ordered to pay her an additional sum, which another trial will decide.
Hilariously, that trial is set to begin next January 15, which is the start day of the Iowa Republican Caucuses. Sexual assault is never funny, but watching perpetrators who clearly thought they got away with it have to face consequences 30 years later, at an extremely inopportune time for them, might be good for a laugh. Although we all know Trump is facing a mountain of federal and state criminal indictments and possible constitutional disqualifications from federal office, which haven’t exactly deterred him from his second presidential campaign, negative press on a primary day can’t be a good thing. We’ll take it.
Back in May, just one day after Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing Carroll in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and later defaming her, he immediately turned around and went on CNN to continue to make some of the exact same super-gross statements he was convicted for—things like, “She’s a whack job,” and “what kinda woman meets somebody and brings them up, and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?”
But it is not even those comments he’s being nailed for in this second trial. Nope, this week, Trump got got for comments he made in 2019, directly after Carroll first came forward, including that Carroll was “trying to sell a new book,” that he didn’t know her, and that she wasn’t his “type” anyway.
Carroll’s lawyer in both suits, Roberta Kaplan, used the success of the first suit to establish a precedent for the second, paving the way for an almost easy victory in the defamation case. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to the lawyer, wrote in his ruling that the previous judgment “is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”
“The jury found that Mr. Trump knew that his statement that Ms. Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior purposes was false or that he acted with reckless disregard to whether it was false,” Kaplan wrote.
Lawyers for Trump are attempting to claim immunity because he was a sitting president in 2019.
(featured image: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Published: Sep 7, 2023 05:05 pm