Liar liable
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.
Loser loser loser. Trump is a loser. Can scowl at the camera all he wants; still a loser.
Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff. But Kaplan found that Carroll was entitled to a partial summary judgment on the question of Trump’s liability in the case.
He cited the fact that jurors at a trial in a separate but related lawsuit in May found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and defamed her in statements he made when he denied her allegation last fall. Carroll’s lawyers argued, and Kaplan agreed, that the jury’s verdict in that case effectively settled the legal question of whether Trump had defamed her in similar comments he made about Carroll in 2019.
It’s a very prominent part of Trump’s personality and way of being in the world that he defames anyone and everyone he feels like defaming. It’s as integral to him as the scowl, the fake hair, the fake tan – he’s genuinely, deeply fake and genuinely, deeply, venomous and defamatory.
Here’s hoping the jury decides he has to give Carroll a very very large amount of money.
From what I have heard, Judge Kaplan is already kind of ornery and does not suffer fools gladly, but Trump’s lawyers have been so awful in these matters that he has come down on them with as many tons of bricks as he legally can. Meanwhile, of course, Giuliani tried the “Alex Jones gambit” of refusing to cooperate in the defamation suit against him brought by two election workers, so now it is just a matter of how much the monetary judgement against him will be.
Trump has become the punchline of an old joke: “We’ve already established you’re a xxxxx; now we’re just haggling about the price.”
He’s like a rattlesnake half- squashed and glued to the road by a passing truck, and which is just awaiting the fate which will arive with the next truck.
(Sorry rattlesnakes for any offence you might take out of that analogy.)