Jury orders Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in defamation case

[jack]

Former President Donald Trump has to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her, a jury decided Friday. In an earlier civil trial, he was found liable for sexually abusing her.

The jury awarded Carroll $18.3 million for reputational and emotional harm for statements he made in 2019, and an additional $65 million in punitive damages. The jury gave Carroll eight times what she asked for, per CNN.

This is Carroll’s second defamation case against Trump. In May, she was awarded $5 million after a jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed her. Carroll’s attorney was saying Trump thinks “the rules don’t apply to him,” according to NBC News, when he abruptly left the courtroom.

Trump walked out of a New York City courtroom Friday morning during final arguments in the defamation case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll. The judge then interrupted closing arguments to say, “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” according to Fox 5.

During his testimony in the case Thursday, Trump defended himself against the defamation charge by saying that Carroll had “said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” according to The Associated Press.
He later added, “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.” Following Trump’s short response, the judge asked the jury to dismiss his remarks. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the trial, has already ruled that Trump defamed Carroll.

“Sitting stone-faced in the witness box, Trump testified that he stood by his earlier deposition in the case, in which he denied having ever met Carroll. He replied ‘no’ when his attorney Alina Habba asked if he had ever instructed anyone to hurt her,” per CBS News. Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, claimed in her book that was published in 2019 that she was sexually assaulted by Trump in the 1990s in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City.

In May 2022, Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault, and Carroll received about $2 million in compensation for the alleged assault and roughly $3 million for defamation, related to posts by Trump on Truth Social.

When Trump’s attorney asked him questions while on the stand Thursday regarding the accuracy of his statements during an October 2022 deposition, he said, “One hundred percent, yes,” per The New York Times.

On Thursday morning, “Carroll’s lawyers played videotaped excerpts from the deposition, in which Trump called the former Elle magazine advice columnist ‘mentally sick’ and a ‘whack job,’ and threatened to sue her,” according to Reuters. It’s a false accusation, never happened, never would happen,” Trump also said in the deposition.

According to The Associated Press, due to the first lawsuit’s conclusions, “Kaplan said Trump now couldn’t offer any testimony ‘disputing or attempting to undermine’ the sexual abuse allegations. The law doesn’t allow for ‘do-overs by disappointed litigants,’” the judge said.

 

[Parallaxis]

Please... please... let him defame her a third time on the court house steps.

 

[jack]

Please... please... let him defame her a third time on the court house steps.

I know right? Seems to have shut him up suddenly.

Lot of press about defamation damages...no one has ever flouted the law before like this in my experience. I think we're seeing how this kind of thumbing the nose at the rule of law is playing out dollar wise. He'd be smart to shut the fuck up about now.

 

[Parallaxis]

Honestly, every reporter in the world should have stuck a mic in his face and asked, "What do you think of E Jean Carrol now?"

 

[C-40]

​

 

[C-40]

​

 

[Loktar]

Trump isn't good at paying people the money they are owed. Carroll will be lucky if she ever sees a dime from that money. If anything it will be years before she does as Trump will fight it.

 

[C-40]

Trump isn't good at paying people the money they are owed. Carroll will be lucky if she ever sees a dime from that money. If anything it will be years before she does as Trump will fight it.

Spoiler

^^This should be Donald Trumps theme song^^​

 

[jack]

Trump isn't good at paying people the money they are owed. Carroll will be lucky if she ever sees a dime from that money. If anything it will be years before she does as Trump will fight it.

Well, here's how it works in NY. Currently there's a surety bond for the first defamation case (which is on appeal). Since he was slammed in the damages phase yesterday, Carroll can now ask that court to expedite that appeal, which of course he will lose.

If he defames her again there will be a third trial for damages, since the first two were slam dunks.

If he DOESN'T appeal the second verdict, she can start liquidating his assets to pay the judgement. If he does appeal, he'll have to put up ALL the 87 million in a second surety bond, and again, all Carrol has to do is have them expedite the appeal. He'll pay. She'll fuck him out of it just like he fucked her in that dressing room at Bergdorff/Goodman's.

All those antics that hepulled in court (especially at the end) were what got him this verdict.

He'll either shit up or put up even biglier.

And this is just the beginning

 

[jack]

Honestly, every reporter in the world should have stuck a mic in his face and asked, "What do you think of E Jean Carrol now?"

It was funny, way I heard it, it was a million dollars added to each step as he stomped out of the courtroom.

He's finished.

 

[jack]

Rachel Maddow Lands First Post-Trial Interview With E. Jean Carroll on MSNBC​

On Monday, the woman who just won $83 a million judgement against Donald Trump will appear on The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC announced late today that Maddow will sit down with E. Jean Carroll for her first interview since a jury ordered former President Donald Trump to hand over $83 million in damages for defaming Carroll.

Carroll will be joined by her attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley for the interview to discuss the case and a potential appeal from Trump. While not a huge dent in self-declared billionaire's wallet, today's verdict is still, in the words of CNN's Jake Tapper this afternoon, "quite a chunk of change." The judgement will be appealed, as the former president indicated today, but overturning the decision could prove difficult for Team Trump.

Fox's Neil Cavuto made a point of remarking that it was a "unanimous jury" verdict. He also noted that Trump's attorneys have recommended the leading GOP candidate, who has used the various court cases against him as campaign backdrops, keep quiet. It's still too early to know if he will comply.

Trump was found liable in May 2023 of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. Back in May, that jury awarded the former Elle columnist $5 million out of her claim that the then real estate mogul sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman change room in the mid-1990s. Today's case came about after Trump continued to attack and demean Carroll, in and out of the White House, online at at campaign rallies.

 

[jack]

LOL this is funny...

Angry Trump fumes after $83.3m damages ruling in E Jean Carroll case​

The $83.3m verdict against Donald Trump in the defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll over her allegation of sexual assault was celebrated by opponents of the former president, analysed by legal experts and excoriated by the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee and his loyal supporters.
Trump called the verdict “absolutely ridiculous” and claimed it was part of a Joe “Biden-directed witch hunt” against “me and the Republican party”.

The new damages verdict followed an award of about $10m against Trump last May, when another New York jury found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. Immediately after the verdict, Jon Cooper, a Democratic operative and activist, tweeted: “$7.3m in compensatory damages, $11m to repair [Carroll’s] reputation, and $65m in punitive damages. Trump is so screwed!!”

From his plane, having left the courtroom as Carroll’s lawyers spoke, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts and will be appealing this whole Biden-directed witch hunt focused on me and the Republican party. Our legal system is out of control and being used as a political weapon. They have taken away all first amendment rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

The president has nothing to do with the Carroll case, which is one of a number involving Trump as he runs to return to the Oval Office. Trump also faces 91 criminal charges over election subversion, retention of classified information and hush money payments; civil suits over his business affairs; and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection with his supporters’ January 6 attack on Congress.

Regardless, he dominates the Republican party and its presidential primary. Outside court, Carroll did not comment, simply smiling as her lawyers accompanied her to a waiting car. Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, protested angrily, saying: “I’m not having any second thoughts about representing President Trump. It is the proudest thing I could ever do. What I’m having second thoughts about is the [law] license that I stand here with, that the people in there are supposed to have.”

Among Trump’s allies in Congress, the far-right Florida representative Matt Gaetz complained: “A country where you cannot deny a fantastical, false allegation is not a free country.” But among Trump’s many opponents, schadenfreude was in ample supply. Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, pondered the effect of the verdict on the billionaire former president’s increasingly battered finances – but also his success in raising money from his political supporters. “Donald Trump’s gonna need to sell some more hats,” Wilson wrote.

Trump won Republican presidential nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire this month and has been pressuring his last remaining rival, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, to drop out before the primary reaches her state.

New York University law professor Ryan Goodman considered what the new verdict in the Carroll case might mean for Trump’s political fortunes. “So far Trump has defied gravity,” Goodman wrote, “… but for how much longer? Social science research suggests a politician will pay a heavy price with voters for sexual assault. Major $83m verdict amplifies that prospect.” Habba, who was warned by the judge over her behaviour in court, bemoaned a supposed “violation of our justice system” and made unsupported accusations about malpractice and bias.

Even on Fox News, a rightwing network generally supportive of the former president, John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, saw nothing but bad news.

“The whole point of these unprecedented damages is to tell Donald Trump to shut up,” Yoo said. “You could think of it this way: every time Donald Trump wants to insult [E] Jean Carroll, he’s gonna have to write a $40m check for each sentence. That’s how bad this is. “I can’t believe his lawyers haven’t succeeded in just telling him, ‘Campaign for president, run for president, make your accusations about a two-tiered justice system. But leave this alone.’”

 

[jack]

Trump Loss to E. Jean Carroll Is Bad Sign for His Criminal Trials: Attorney​

The verdict from Donald Trump's second E. Jean Carroll civil defamation trial "is important foreshadowing" for his pending criminal trials, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner claimed on Saturday. A New York City jury on Friday ordered that Trump must pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, a former Elle columnist, for statements made in 2019 when he claimed that she was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her inside a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. That amount includes $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million for reputational repair, and $65 million in punitive damages. Trump was previously ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages last year in another civil defamation trial stemming from a denial he made about her claims in 2022.

Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, has long maintained his innocence, even after the first jury found him liable for sexual abuse. Vowing to appeal, Trump has accused the cases of being "witch hunts" against him and the Republican Party directed by President Joe Biden, despite neither Biden nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) having any involvement in the civil case.

In a Saturday morning thread shared to X, formerly Twitter, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney turned legal analyst known for his criticism of Trump, wrote that the result in the former president's second defamation trial will have major implications for his criminal trials, as it shows how his claims continue to fail in a court of law. Trump has been hit with four criminal indictments amounting to 91 criminal charges, all of which he has pleaded not guilty to.

"The result in the 2nd E. Jean Carroll case is important foreshadowing for Trump's upcoming criminal trials," Kirschner wrote. "When cases move from the court of public opinion into courts of law, Trump loses. He lost the NY civil fraud trial...He lost BOTH E. Jean Carroll cases...Here's the thing: the rules of evidence don't apply in the court of public opinion. So Trump lies every day in his desperate attempt to continue to deceive & grift from his ever-shrinking gaggle of supporters. But the rules of evidence, the rules of procedure, & the rule of law all apply inside courtrooms."

He continued: "And what did we see just yesterday - Trump LITERALLY can't handle the truth, given that he stormed out of the courtroom when Ms. Carroll's attorney told the jury that Donald Trump is a liar who acts like the rules don't apply to him. Once Trump's criminal trials commence - and the rules of evidence and the rules of procedure control the proceedings - Trump will be convicted so fast it will make his head spin."

 

[jack]

 

[jack]

Trump claimed his E. Jean Carroll defamations were the best thing that ever happened to her. Here's how the grotesque tactic met its end.​

• Trump claimed the fame Carroll earned from his defamations is a "benefit" that lessens any damages.
• Carroll's side called this "Donald Trump's most insulting argument."
• Ultimately, jurors were barred from considering "any reputational benefits" in calculating damages.

Remember the "slaves learned valuable skills" controversy from July, when Florida updated its history standards, essentially telling middle-schoolers, "Hey, slavery wasn't all bad?" Donald Trump hoped a similarly grotesque claim would save him some cash at his New York defamation trial. He tried to convince jurors that the fallout E. Jean Carroll suffered from his repeated attacks — including torrents of hate mail and death threats — hasn't been all bad. After all, the defense reasoned, Carroll was once just an advice columnist with a small, loyal following. Now, she's an anti-Trump icon, more famous, more beloved, and more in demand as a media personality than ever. "She is living the life of the rich and famous, hanging out with celebrities, Kathy Griffin," lead defense lawyer Alina Habba said in closing arguments Friday. She's "Getting tweets of acclaim," Habba added, "from Alyssa Milano, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rob Reiner." This reputational windfall, Trump's side argued, should figure into the jurors' math, and actually lower any damages.

Habba pushed the point all last week, starting with opening statements. "She likes her new brand," Habba told jurors then, unveiling a jarring take on Carroll, considering that a previous jury, in May, had found she'd been violated by Trump's fingers in a mid-'90s sexual assault. "As you will see," Habba promised in opening arguments, referring to Carroll's newfound fame, "she got what she wanted." It's like a twist on the New York Post's infamous "Best sex I've ever had" headline. This was to be Trump's "Best defamation she ever had" defense. Until a federal judge in Manhattan shut it down — completely. Here's how Carroll's legal team and US District Judge Lewis Kaplan kept Trump's side from arguing that Carroll "got what she wanted" in terms of notoriety and support — and how the jury was barred from subtracting a single penny for "reputational benefit" from their ultimate $83.3 million verdict.

Trump's "best defamation she ever had" defense was supposed to work like this. Let's start with a defamatory statement — like "She's a whack job," to quote from the 2019 defamation that started the Carroll litigation. Let's suppose this defamatory statement injured Carroll's reputation in one part of the community, meaning among Trump supporters and anyone else persuaded by his attacks. But what if the same "whack job" defamation also boosted Carroll's reputation in another part of the community, meaning among Trump haters and anyone else who publicly rallied to her side? Judge Kaplan called this the "net versus gross" question. Should the jury set damages that match the total, or "net,'' injury to Carroll's reputation among those who now scorn her? Or should damages compensate her for the "gross" injury to her reputation — the injury that remains after deducting for the admiration and success that also came her way.

Carroll's side was most decidedly on team "net." In a January 21 letter addressing the net-versus-gross question, they cited the Freeman v. Giuliani case, in which a jury hit Rudy Giuliani with $148 million in damages for an imaginary election-interference smear campaign that defamed two Georgia election workers. Like Carroll, the election workers — Ruby Freeman and daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss — benefitted from an upwelling of sympathy and support after Giuliani's defamatory lies. But judges in the Giuliani case and similar cases did not instruct jurors that this kind of "collateral" benefit offsets damages, Carroll's defense noted in their letter. That's because "such benefits are irrelevant as a matter of law," Carroll attorney Joshua Matz wrote to Judge Kaplan.

"Net versus Gross" spilled into the courtroom Thursday as the parties argued over the pre-deliberations instructions that were to be given to jurors the next day. Trump's side was, naturally, on team "gross." They wanted a big damages deduction for all the good things that happened to Carroll due to Trump's attacks. Trump attorney Michael Madaio argued that the Supreme Court has defined reputation as the sum total, good and bad, of how someone's character is held by those around them. "So you have to look at that holistically," Madaio told the judge. "And that includes any benefit to her reputation." From the bench, Kaplan then posed to Madaio a very odd hypothetical. "I don't think it is still the case, although I don't really know," the judge began. "But there was a time where polygamy was legal in one state in the United States. Yes?" "Yes, your honor," Madaio answered, sounding a bit quizzical. "And in 49 states, or however many, it was not only illegal, it was criminal," the judge continued. "Yes?" "Yes," Madaio answered again. Being falsely accused of living with eight spouses "would be possibly not defamatory at all" for someone living in the state where polygamy is legal, the judge reasoned. "It, indeed, might be an indication of respect and admiration for the person who had accomplished the wonderful thing of having eight spouses," the judge continued. But in much of the rest of the country, "it would be an imputation of criminal and immoral behavior, right?" the judge asked. "Right," Madaio answered.

So should the person who falsely accuses someone of having eight spouses earn a small damages discount, the judge asked, because there's one state where polygamy is OK?
Carroll attorney Joshua Matz thought not. He countered that any benefit Carroll received was "forced on her" when Trump called her a crazy liar and told his audience of tens of millions of listeners that she should "pay dearly." And for that, Matz argued, Trump doesn't deserve any kind of break at all.

Then Matz offered the judge a hypothetical of his own. "Let's imagine that Mr. Trump made a statement that absolutely wrecked Ms. Carroll's reputation in the eyes of 49 percent of the audience," Matz said, "but actually led 51 percent of the audience to think more highly of her." If you go with Trump's reasoning, he'd get a free pass, Matz argued. There'd be no damages due at all. Carroll's reputation getting wrecked in the eyes of all those other folks simply wouldn't matter. "The fact that somebody who has been defamed could also receive some reputational benefit — either from people admiring them for the thing they are accused of having done, or being sympathetic to them, or abhorrent about the whole situation — has never been understood to offset damages," Matz told the judge. The judge said he'd sleep on the "net versus gross" question.

The next day, Friday, Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan — no relation to the judge — raised the question again, this time to the jury, in closing arguments. "The defense in this case actually has the nerve to suggest that Ms. Carroll actually should be grateful to Donald Trump for defaming her because she is even more famous than she was before," the attorney told the jurors. "Donald Trump's most insulting argument," she called it. "I have to be honest with you," she told jurors. "It takes a lot of gall to make an argument like that.

 

[jack]

'Bogus motion by the Trump team': Legal experts mock Habba’s latest 'nonsense' filing​

Alina Habba — who represented former President Donald Trump in writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit — is getting roasted for her most recent filing challenging US District Judge Lewis Kaplan's impartiality. Salon reported that in the 1990s, both Judge Kaplan and Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation) worked at the same white shoe law firm. An unnamed source claiming to be a partner at the firm told the New York Post that the fact that Lewis Kaplan mentored Roberta Kaplan was "insane" and "incestuous." Habba used that to argue that there was an undisclosed conflict of interest and that there should new a trial. "If Your Honor truly worked with Ms. Kaplan in any capacity — especially if there was a mentor/mentee relationship — that fact should have been disclosed before any case involving these parties was permitted to proceed forward," Habba wrote, requesting more information about the relationship between Judge Kaplan and Carroll's attorney. She also argued that Carroll's other attorney, Shawn Crowley, once clerking for Judge Kaplan was an additional conflict of interest.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Habba's filing was "a bogus motion by the Trump team," and that the fact that older, more established attorneys often mentor new lawyers doesn't prove the need to convene a new trial. "There’s nothing there," Honig said. "Every judge in that courthouse knows, socializes with, has worked with, sometimes maybe mentored, dozens, hundreds of attorneys in this city. I used to practice in that courthouse in front of judges who used to be my colleagues, my supervisors. If anything, they were tougher on me as a result of it. That is not enough for a conflict of interest." Attorney Andrew Fleischmann said on X/Twitter that Habba "waived the issue" when declining to object to Crowley clerking for Judge Kaplan. Former federal prosecutor Daniel R. Alonso was more curt in his criticism, tweeting that Habba's motion was "nonsense." "[A] lawyer would have to be an idiot not to know that the judge and Ms. Kaplan were at the same firm," Alonso said. "Knock it off!"

 

[jack]

E. Jean Carroll lawyer says Trump claims of judge conflict no basis to toss $83.3 million verdict​

• E. Jean Carroll's lawyer rebutted a claim that she was mentored by the judge who oversaw the rape defamation trial of former president Donald Trump.
• The attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said there is "no basis" to toss the recent $83.3 million jury verdict against the former president in Carroll's favor.
• She blasted Trump's attorney Alina Habba for raising "false allegations of a mentor-mentee relationship" between Kaplan and Judge Lewis Kaplan when they both worked at the prestigious and large New York law firm Paul, Weiss.

 

[jack]

E. Jean Carroll’s Lawyer Says This Donald Trump Move Led To His $83.3 Million Downfall​

Roberta Kaplan, the attorney for writer E. Jean Carroll, has recalled what convinced her client to sue Donald Trump and ultimately led to two separate juries ordering the former president to pay the advice columnist an astonishing $88.3 million in total damages. Last year, a jury ordered Republican 2024 front-runner Trump to pay Carroll $5 million in damages after it found him liable for sexual assault, after she accused him of raping her in the 1990s, and defamation when he denied the claims by suggesting she was trying to cash in and was part of some kind of political plot to bring him down. A jury last week then ordered Trump pay Carroll $83.3 million for defamation for further comments he made.

In a lengthy interview that Politico published Thursday, Kaplan agreed with former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori’s assessment that Trump had “benefited from the fact that there was a wave of women who came forward in 2016” with allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women, including sexual harassment and assault, “because then he was doing blanket denials.” “Exactly, exactly,” said Kaplan. “Which I imagine is much harder as defamation,” said Khardori. “Exactly,” Kaplan repeated. Then she explained, “E. Jean said in her deposition that she had an incident with Les Moonves once in an elevator in L.A. where he kind of pushed up against her, and she said he was like an octopus. She was asked in her deposition, in our case, ‘Why didn’t you sue Les Moonves?’ The answer was because a lot of women accused him, and he just did a blanket denial — a group denial of all of them... If Donald Trump had done that here, I wouldn’t have sued him.”

Moonves resigned from his longtime role as CEO of CBS in 2018 amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Carroll “also said if Donald Trump had said that it happened, but he thought she consented, she wouldn’t have sued him,” Kaplan added. “What was so offensive about it was the idea that she was just making it up to sell a book or two as part of a Democratic plot.”

 

[jack]

Trump hired private investigator to check work done by his E. Jean Carroll lawyers: report​

A political action committee closely tied to Donald Trump's re-election bid recently spent close to a quarter of a million dollars to investigate the quality of work of his legal team which has now suffered two losses to E. Jean Carroll and her attorneys. According to an exclusive report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, FEC filings submitted this week show that the former president's Save America PAC made payments of $238,100 in the last six months to CTS Research, a New York-based private investigator firm, after paying the company another $152,285 earlier in the year. According to the Beast, Trump insiders confirmed the expenditures were made to check out whether Trump's team had tracked down and interviewed any witnesses who could help him in his sexual assault and defamation cases that ultimately led to a combined $88.3 million in damages over two trials.

Those attorneys likely include controversial lead attorney Alina Habba, who is reportedly on the outs with Trump and associate Michael Madaio. The report notes, "According to the person familiar with the matter, the private detective discovered that an early iteration of Trump’s legal team failed to interview several witnesses in the Carroll case — something that should have been a basic step in defending the former president. But the private investigator expense is an extraordinarily unusual one to place on a PAC."

The report goes on to note that the money spent is just a tiny sliver of the funds being diverted from the embattled ex-president's re-election campaign to fend off multiple lawsuits and criminal indictments. As the Beast's Pagliery wrote, "At this point, it’s clear prosecutors aren’t the only ones causing Trump’s legal headaches; his own lawyers, and his suspicions of ineptitude, seem to be in his head too."

 

[jack]