Our legal system served E. Jean Carroll well today. Today a jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming her. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages that Trump has to pay.
A New York Times story starts off this way.
A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, but this is the only allegation to be affirmed by a jury.
In the civil case, the federal jury of six men and three women found that Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently proved that Mr. Trump sexually abused her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The jury did not, however, find he had raped her, as she had long claimed.
The jury, in returning the verdict shortly before 3 p.m., also found that Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency, defamed Ms. Carroll in October when he posted a statement on his Truth Social platform calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” His lawyer said he intended to appeal.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers called no witnesses, and he never appeared at the trial to hear Ms. Carroll, who had sued him last year, deliver visceral testimony about the attack she said had ended her romantic life forever.
Trump's attorney said he was pleased that the jury didn't find Trump raped Carroll. But Carroll admitted that she wasn't sure whether Trump fully penetrated her or just partially did so. This shows that the jury carefully considered the evidence in the trial, which renders Trump's crazy claim of "witch hunt" to be as absurd as his contention that he'd never met Carroll.
Of course, there will be the usual assertions that Trump's bad character is "baked in" to how voters see him, so today's guilty verdict in Carroll's civil case against Trump won't hurt his candidacy to become president again.
A well-documented Just Security story argues otherwise. Here's an excerpt from Why the E. Jean Carroll Verdict Will Matter to Voters.
The unanimous jury verdict that has turned Donald Trump from an alleged sexual assaulter into a proven one may create political shockwaves if recent history is any guide. As numerous empirical studies have shown, the American public has come to view sexual assault as a form of abusing power that can disqualify a perpetrator from holding public office. Trump may suffer significant political damage from this new majoritarian understanding.
In November 2017, 61% of voters – including 56% of men and a nontrivial margin of white men (50-43) and white women (55-37) – said then-President Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have engaged in “sexual harassment,” according to a Quinnipiac poll. That overall support – the eye popping number of 61% – was higher than any poll tracking public support for impeachment and removal from office for the scandalous conduct in Trump’s first and second impeachments (see Five Thirty-Eight’s complete collection of surveys for the first and second impeachment). What’s more, Quinnipiac asked only about sexual harassment not sexual assault in the case of Trump. The latter, which is also the core crime in the E. Jean Carroll verdict, would have presumably produced even greater levels of support for removal from office.
The Quinnipiac poll was not alone.
Here's some other tweets from my Twitter feed today.
Of course, this is just the first trial that Trump is likely to face. A Politico story, Trump's defeat in Carroll case presages more legal peril, lays out those cases. I'm just sharing the title of each one. Read the story for details.
Indictment watch in Fulton County
KEY DATE: JULY 11
Pre-trial motions in the Manhattan hush-money case
KEY DATE: AUG. 8
Upcoming trial in New York civil case against the Trump Organization
KEY DATE: OCT. 2
The federal probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election
The federal probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents
Another lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll
Kind of amazing that Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 with all of these legal problems looming over him. Just goes to show that any claim the GOP has to be the law-and-order party is a bunch of B.S.
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