Trump 61: Hide The Ketchup, He’s Been Indicted Again

[GreyhoundFan]

The E. Jean Carroll civil case goes to the jury tomorrow. Jack Smith's team keeps interviewing people. Fani Willis has granted immunity to eight of his fake electors. And his Proud Boys have been convicted. These are not happy times for TFG.

 

A sobering thought from TLP:

 

Continued from here:

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by GreyhoundFan
Update title

[GreyhoundFan]

I’m guessing he won’t be able to adhere to this order:

[Xan]

Donny, as usual, is getting out in front of a possible guilty verdict by proclaiming that he's innocent and will appeal.  And, by the way, you orange twatwaffle, you were allowed to speak.  You chose not to do so.  How far you are ahead in any stupid poll doesn't factor into the legal system process.

[SassyPants]

22 minutes ago, Xan said:

Donny, as usual, is getting out in front of a possible guilty verdict by proclaiming that he's innocent and will appeal.  And, by the way, you orange twatwaffle, you were allowed to speak.  You chose not to do so.  How far you are ahead in any stupid poll doesn't factor into the legal system process.

Interesting that he capitalizes “false accusation” and “rape.” 

[GreyhoundFan]

His minders really need to add Xanax to his Diet Coke 

 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://abc7chicago.com/e-jean-carroll-case-trump-closing-arguments-jury-rape-trial-defamation/13226735/

 

Well, they found him sort of guilty. And dealt a pretty huge hit to his wallet!

Quote

NEW YORK -- A jury in Manhattan on Tuesday found former President Trump liable of battery and liable of defamation in connection with claims brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

The jury found that Trump did not rape Carroll but sexually abused her and awarded damages of $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery.

The jury awarded $1 million in damages, $1.7 million for reputation repair and $280,000 in punitive damages

The jury reached its verdict after just under three hours of deliberations.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by about two dozen women. Carroll's battery allegation was the first to make it before a jury.

 

[Xan]

He'll appeal but at least they found him guilty.  Good.  And $5 million total is a decent amount.

[AnywhereButHere]

3 minutes ago, Xan said:

He'll appeal but at least they found him guilty.  Good.  And $5 million total is a decent amount.

Yeah, $5 million will definitely have him crying and probably throwing his attorney, Tapioca, under the bus. I'm loving that the jury was apparently unanimous too. 

[Jana814]

I’m so happy he was found guilty. I hope him being found guilty continues. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[ADoyle90815]

Even better is that it was a unanimous decision by the jury, including at least some MAGA cult members. It's unusual to have a unanimous civil jury verdict, as you only need a majority. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump tests how insulated his base is from the Carroll verdict reality"

Quote

With the obvious exception of the celebrity of the defendant, the civil trial that Donald Trump faced in New York unfolded as any other such trial might. There was evidence, there were depositions. Each side offered an opening statement. The attorney for the plaintiff, writer E. Jean Carroll, called witnesses and Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, cross-examined them.

Tacopina did decide against presenting his own witnesses, a not-unheard-of tactic aimed in part at suggesting to the jury that the case against the defendant was weak enough to require no additional response. In retrospect, that may have been an error; on Tuesday afternoon, the jury returned a verdict finding Trump liable in defaming Carroll in response to her allegation that he’d assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

The jury also determined that sufficient evidence existed to determine that the assault had actually occurred. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages.

The trial is over, but the political battle Trump faces is not. For months, he has worked to squeeze the Carroll lawsuit into the large box holding all of his other legal threats, casting it as yet another effort by the left or the elites or the whoevers to block his political ascent and, by doing so, to render his supporters themselves inert.

As has been the case since he first cobbled together his “witch hunt” defense in response to reports about Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump offered a steady stream of misinformation to his social media followers and supporters framing the lawsuit as biased, unfair and un-American. As the trial reached its conclusion, Trump began making noises about taking the stand, rebutting Carroll’s claims from within the courtroom.

While he was in Ireland last week, he pledged to do exactly that.

“I’m going to go back and confront this woman,” he told reporters. “This woman is a disgrace, and it shouldn’t be allowed in this country.”

There is no reason that this would appeal to Tacopina. If Trump took the stand, he would open himself to cross-examination from Carroll’s attorney — a real-time, under-oath opportunity to pick apart his claims and allegations. Tacopina appeared to let slip his frustration with his client; speaking during a sidebar with the judge last week, he reportedly said that Trump wasn’t going to show up.

“I know you understand what I am dealing with,” Tacopina told the judge.

Trump, in fact, did not testify. So how did he spin it?

“Waiting for a jury decision on a False Accusation where I, despite being a current political candidate and leading all others in both parties, am not allowed to speak or defend myself, even as hard nosed reporters scream questions about this case at me,” Trump said on Truth Social. “In the meantime, the other side has a book falsely accusing me of Rape, & is working with the press. I will therefore not speak until after the trial, but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome!”

You’ll notice that this statement isn’t itself consistent: He is choosing not to speak until after the trial, but also he’s being “unconstitutionally silenced”? He’s “not allowed to speak or defend himself” but was going to “confront” Carroll?

You will also notice that it is obviously not true. He could have taken the stand if he wanted, perhaps giving Tacopina a coronary in the process. What’s more, he did speak — in a lengthy deposition at which he, lawyer at his side, answered various questions posed by Carroll’s attorney, getting in any number of digs about the lawsuit and his opponents. Had he taken the stand, he’d have had the chance to present his case — but also faced interruptions from Carroll’s attorney and, later, a cross-examination that benefited from having his deposition responses and rhetoric in hand.

How weak is this argument about being silenced? Even Fox News — as part of a lengthy exploration of the failure the verdict constituted for Trump — rejected the idea that this “silencing” would be the heart of his appeal.

“He was asked if he wanted to testify in person here and he declined, correct?” Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked legal commentator — and constant Trump defender — Jonathan Turley.

“Yeah, that dog won’t hunt,” Turley replied. “If that’s the argument on appeal, then it’s going to be a rather quick appeal.”

That probably won’t be the argument on appeal. A statement sent to reporters by the Trump campaign didn’t include any allegation about being silenced, focusing instead on how “this entire bogus case is a political endeavor targeting President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be once again elected President of the United States.”

Again, though, there is a difference between what Trump says and what his campaign says, just as there’s a difference between what Trump says and his attorney said. For Trump, it’s more useful to tell his social media audience that the leftist elites are illegally muffling him than to suggest that the case was lost on the merits. It’s more useful, in part, because his core base of support has demonstrated repeatedly over the past eight years that it prefers his formulation of events to those of his opponents or to that crafted by reality.

Fox News isn’t biting. But maybe his fans will, and that’s good enough.

 

[Howl]

Quite the day!  Trump is found guilty in the E. Jean Carroll case.  As a Tweeter noted, George Santos will make a statement soon about his role as a juror in the case. Just kidding!   In real life,  Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against George Santos, although those charges are currently sealed.  He should have a hearing tomorrow. 

Back to Trump, the judge in his hush money case has directed him to STFU and stop kvetching and whinging in public and on social media about his charges until the trial. 

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting analysis: "4 takeaways from the E. Jean Carroll verdict against Trump"

Quote

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, video surfaced of Donald Trump speaking cavalierly about sexually abusing women. The GOP initially blanched at the disclosure, with many calling for Trump to drop out. But it soon warmed to his “locker room talk” explanation, stood by him, and he won.

A major verdict against Trump on Tuesday took this issue decidedly out of “locker room talk” realm.

For the first time, when it comes to a series of claims of sexual misconduct against Trump, the legal system has issued a judgment against him. The civil jury in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit found Trump liable both for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her as he defended himself against her allegations. The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, which was what Carroll called his attack, but he will have to pay $5 million in combined damages for injuring her and calling her a liar.

Below are some takeaways.

1. Parsing the verdict

There will undoubtedly be some confusion about how Trump was found to have sexually abused Carroll but not raped her, as she has claimed for years. And Trump’s defenders quickly homed in on that latter aspect of the verdict.

“This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that, made other findings,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said afterward. “We’ll obviously be appealing those other findings.”

This boils down to what the jury thought was likely. (The standard in civil cases is a preponderance of evidence — more likely than not — rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard in criminal cases.) Judge Lewis A. Kaplan offered jurors three forms of battery under which Trump could be liable: rape, sexual abuse and forcible touching.

For the jury to find it was rape, the judge said it would have to find that there was sexual intercourse by force, including penetration. For sexual abuse, the requirement was touching sexual or intimate parts by force. It found that the latter was likely. (Kaplan said forcible touching “includes squeezing, grabbing, pinching, rubbing or other bodily contact that involves the application of some level of pressure to the victim’s sexual or intimate parts.”)

The verdict will at least allow Trump to say that he wasn’t found liable for an offense as serious as the one Carroll alleged. But the size of the damages and the speed with which the jurors reached their verdict (just a few hours) suggests they were easily convinced Trump engaged in the kind of conduct he spoke about on the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he said that if you were a star, women would let you get away with what you want.

2. The GOP’s new dilemma

Trump has weathered any number of controversies thanks to a concerted, years-long campaign to claim virtually any charge against him is part of a “witch hunt.”

This was not a criminal case, but regardless, the “witch hunt” claim could be more difficult to pull off in this instance.

For one thing, the verdict deals with decidedly ugly conduct. Whether Trump committed financial crimes, leveraged Ukraine to interfere in an American election or incited a mob on Jan. 6, sexually abusing a woman differs from those — it is a particularly sensitive issue.

And it’s an issue on which the American public’s verdict could be harsher. In a November 2017 poll conducted amid a series of unrelated sexual harassment allegations against Trump, Americans said nearly 2-to-1 (61 percent to 33 percent) that Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have sexually harassed women. Independents agreed, 59 percent to 34 percent, and even 28 percent of Republicans agreed. Support in this hypothetical case was higher than in either of Trump’s first or second impeachments.

A major question now is whether Americans feel this has been proven, and whether they feel the same way.

The verdict also seems to confirm something that many people believed about Trump — at least at one point. A CNN poll around the same time in 2017 found that Americans believed it was “mostly true” that Trump had made unwanted sexual advances against women by a 61-to-32-percent margin. (It bears noting that the verdict here goes beyond unwanted advances.)

Beyond that, there’s the matter of how Trump claims this is part of the witch hunt. He has set about doing that, of course, alleging that critics like conservative lawyer George Conway are behind the case. But while the trial was held in heavily blue Manhattan, this was not a case brought by a Democratic prosecutor or by the supposed “deep state” in the Justice Department.

Shortly after the verdict, Republicans generally responded like you’d expect them to: declining to comment or saying they weren’t familiar with what had happened.

But one of Trump’s 2024 opponents, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (R), said, “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”

No. 2 Senate Republican, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), meanwhile, seemed to suggest that the verdict should cause Republicans to rethink their 2024 calculus, citing Trump’s many legal problems.

“I think there’s going to be an ongoing drumbeat over the next couple years as [Trump] is a candidate,” Thune said. “People are going to have to decide if that’s a factor. For a lot of voters, it’s going to be.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) added that “I don’t think he can get elected.”

One Republican who did defend Trump in no uncertain terms was Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who said: “The jury is a joke. The whole case is a joke.”

3. The judge’s striking warning to jurors

Trump’s tendency to attack those who run afoul of him and the proceedings themselves led the judge on Tuesday to offer a striking word of caution to jurors.

They are free to speak about the trial, Kaplan said, but he strongly advised them not to.

“My advice to you is not to identify yourself,” Kaplan told the jurors. He said that if they do, they shouldn’t do it “for a very long time.”

Kaplan last month opted to use an anonymous jury in the case, citing how “Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters.”

4. The civil system strikes back at Trump

A civil verdict against Trump provides a measure of irony. That’s because the litigious Trump, more than virtually anyone in America, has wielded the civil court system against his foes relentlessly.

A Wall Street Journal review in 2016 found that Trump and his companies had filed a “multitude of lawsuits.” It said, “It is difficult to determine whether Mr. Trump files more lawsuits than others with similarly broad business interests.” But many of the suits were eyebrow-raisers. He sued alleging the band Earth, Wind & Fire wasn’t A-list talent. He sued a Miss USA contestant for allegedly disparaging the pageant. He threatened to sue Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) for allegedly untrue campaign advertising.

Such efforts have only ramped up in recent years, with Trump suing a series of media outlets and political opponents, including Hillary Clinton, his former lawyer Michael Cohen and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Those cases have sometimes been facially ridiculous, and they have often been dismissed and sometimes been found to be baseless or frivolous.

Just last week, a Trump lawsuit against the New York Times was thrown out. The judge ordered Trump to pay all attorney’s fees, other legal expenses and associated costs and said Trump’s claims failed “as a matter of constitutional law.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I’m surprised he’s not laying on the floor, kicking his feet like a toddler having a tantrum:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More bad news for TFG:

 

[Xan]

43 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I’m surprised he’s not laying on the floor, kicking his feet like a toddler having a tantrum

But he is.  At least he's still tantrum-ing on Truth Social.  He's complaining about the judge and the jury and keeps insisting that he has no idea who E. Jean Carroll is.  I understand that his lawyers can't control him but someone should have explained that he's about to walk into another defamation charge.

What's interesting is that he's sticking with the "we" as in "we can't tolerate this any longer" sort of thing.  He wants the Trumpers to believe that they're in this with him.  At some level, he might understand that being labeled as a sexual assaulter isn't a team sport but he wants his followers to think this is still just the Democrats trying to keep him from being President-for-Life.

ETA:  If he does manage to get in again, he'll never leave.  We will end up with a dictatorship.  It's what he's wanted for some time now.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Xan

[Audrey2]

29 minutes ago, Xan said:

But he is.  At least he's still tantrum-ing on Truth Social.  He's complaining about the judge and the jury and keeps insisting that he has no idea who E. Jean Carroll is.  I understand that his lawyers can't control him but someone should have explained that he's about to walk into another defamation charge.

What's interesting is that he's sticking with the "we" as in "we can't tolerate this any longer" sort of thing.  He wants the Trumpers to believe that they're in this with him.  At some level, he might understand that being labeled as a sexual assaulter isn't a team sport but he wants his followers to think this is still just the Democrats trying to keep him from being President-for-Life.

ETA:  If he does manage to get in again, he'll never leave.  We will end up with a dictatorship.  It's what he's wanted for some time now.

Even scarier, I fear his succession plan will be Don

Junior when he passes away.

[Dandruff]

2 hours ago, Xan said:

What's interesting is that he's sticking with the "we" as in "we can't tolerate this any longer" sort of thing.  He wants the Trumpers to believe that they're in this with him.  At some level, he might understand that being labeled as a sexual assaulter isn't a team sport but he wants his followers to think this is still just the Democrats trying to keep him from being President-for-Life.

I think many of the Trumpers are living vicariously through his sins, so it might kind of be a team sport.  No responsibility and a possible cheap thrill for the most repressed and repulsive among them.

[Howl]

8 hours ago, Xan said:

What's interesting is that he's sticking with the "we" as in "we can't tolerate this any longer" sort of thing.  He wants the Trumpers to believe that they're in this with him.

He wanted the Jan. 6 rioters to believe he was in it with them, and then left ALL of them hanging, twisting in the wind.  Arrest, jailed, trials, no money for lawyers bills, no nothing from Trump, who implied he'd have everyone's back. 

You'd think huge numbers of followers would be disaffected by this bait-and-switch betrayal, but no.  They are still giving him money.  It's incomprehensible. 

[Xan]

Captain Crazypants ranted more last night.  He thinks the judge should have recused himself.  (For what?)  I think he's going squirrelly since he's got the CNN town hall tonight and there will be a lot of questions about his sexual assault.  

Spoiler

Then he goes with his tried and true maneuver of "look over here!" to distract with the millions of immigrants who he keeps saying are flooding into the country.  I do think it's amusing that Donny says that the Democrats can't win without cheating when he's the one who obviously can't win without cheating.  Nice projection there!

Spoiler

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by Xan

[SassyPants]

Trump never should have been elected after the Access Hollywood tape was released. I’m so glad that his own words have come back to haunt him in civil court. 

Can you imagine the women that he has sexually assaulted having to live through a Trump presidency?  How does one’s mind even comprehend that? 

[fraurosena]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I’m surprised he’s not laying on the floor, kicking his feet like a toddler having a tantrum:

 

Oh my sweet Rufus! " I don't know her, she lied, it never happened."

He's defaming her again!!

I really hope she sues him, again. (And again, and again.... )

[GreyhoundFan]

More insanity: