Former President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll over $83 million in damages for repeatedly defaming her, a jury found Friday.
The nine-person jury began deliberations in federal court in New York at 1:40 p.m. ET and reached a verdict in just under three hours.
Wow. They actually used the “she was asking for it” argument against a victim of sexual assault.
Also, he’s still not going to shut up about it and will land back in court under additional defamation charges.
Not exactly. It’s far more insidious (and stupid). Her tact was to show that Carroll already received her financial reward by all the books and news appearances (i.e. the “comments and attention”). Basically, “Sure, she was raped, but look how well she profited from it!”
Too bad that kind of argument is only really relevant to the first trial. This one was punitive damages for failing to shut up after losing the first one, the purpose of which is to punish Trump so he thinks twice about doing it again, not award reparations to Ms. Carroll.
Alina Habba is truly the lawyer Trump deserves.
I agree, and my comment was intended as a reference not to the original rape but to the defense saying that she did not deserve any additional compensation due to Trump’s ongoing defamation because she wanted to profit off of it.
If I remember, one of his initial defenses against the allegations of rape was that the woman accusing him was too unattractive to rape, while other defenses were “they just let you do it.” I was thinking about the ironic application of the “asking for it” argument being applied to the additional judgement of defamation.
He’s going to triple down on this though, because he never thinks twice about anything. I don’t know if he is actually playing the game of “never admit to being wrong even when you are” or if he’s simply delusional enough to have reconstructed reality in his own brain, but I’d lay a wager that he’s not going to be able to shut up about this, even now. I don’t think it will even take a reporter triggering him by asking about it. I think it’s just going to pop out in one of his word salad campaign rambles.
And I can’t wait for that to happen, because I’m sure a third jury will be so pleased (/s) he did it a third time.
Maybe next time he could at least be smart enough to do it in a red state.
Can’t wait for someone to ask him about the case at a rally or something. He won’t be able to help himself.
He knows very well how profitable being a victim can be and must think that that’s why anyone is a victim. They don’t win cases (because Trump hasn’t ever really had a case), they settle out of court or gain from the sympathy of others.