As my old Political Animal colleague Steve Benen points out for MSNBC, the disgraced ex-president absolutely lost his shit on Truth Social on Thursday, posting incessantly about E. Jean Carroll. Clearly he’s worried about the onset of the second defamation case scheduled to begin the same day as the Republican Iowa caucuses. The case is basically a formality since it has already been determined that he sexually assaulted Carroll and then defamed her.
Carroll sued Trump twice, once over his very public denials from the White House in 2019 that a rape ever occurred, and again for a taunting written statement he made in 2022 after leaving office.
The second lawsuit went first. Trump ghosted his rape trial in New York City federal court last year, leaving his inadvisable remarks on tape to do the talking for him. It was a blunder that resulted in the jury quickly determining that he did indeed sexually abuse Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The decision came with a $5 million verdict that punished Trump for forcing himself on her—and defaming her in the written statement.
But now that it’s already been legally determined that Trump had some kind of predatory sexual encounter with Carroll, the White House comments defamation case is proceeding on damages only. The jury will solely determine how much money Trump owes for misusing the presidential podium to essentially call his accuser a liar. The evidence will be the same, the issues will be narrow, and the trial could be over in a flash.
He’s going to get hammered with much more than a $5 million verdict, and continuing to run his mouth about Carroll isn’t going to help.
I believe he will find out that it didn’t help to run his mouth about the judge in his New York fraud case either. Judge Arthur Engoron will hold Trump’s fate in his hands when he decides the penalty some time in February. And I don’t expect any mercy.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is calling for a $370 million fine against former President Donald Trump and his companies and a lifetime ban on him and two of his former company executives from the real estate industry in the state.
Attorneys from James’ office requested the punishment in post-trial motions filed Friday in the Trump fraud case. They said that Trump owes $168 million of interest allegedly saved through fraud; $152 million from the sale of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., the site of one of Trump’s hotels; $60 million through the transfer of the Ferry Point Golf Course contract; and $2.5 million from severance agreements for former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Howard Weisselberg and ex-Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney.
James also called for lifetime bans for Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from participation in the real estate industry as well as from serving as officers or directors in New York corporations or entities. The attorney general also asked for five-year bans for Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, with the same conditions.
I won’t be shocked if AG James gets everything she seeks. Trump has done nothing in the case to inspire leniency.
He’ll appeal, of course, but he has little hope of prevailing on the substance. This is all part of taking Trump down to the studs. It’s all that matters.
“This is all part of taking Trump down to the studs.”
Exactly.
There’s a persistent center-right talking point going back at least as far as the Mueller investigation that Democrats are looking for a “magic bullet” to do the work of defeating Trump for them.
No.
Democrats (and pro-democracy citizens) want the institutions of democracy (the various branches and agencies of government, the free press, voluntary associations) to do their jobs in upholding democracy.
Citizens have done their part not once but twice—giving Trump’s opponents sizable majorities in the popular vote in 2016 and 2020. There’s lots of fuzziness in political polls these days, but voters seem prepared to do the same again in November.
What’s needed is for the institutions of democracy to function: for prosecutors to prosecute without fear or favor, for legislators to use their powers to their full extent, for the courts to treat Trump like any other defendant, for the media to stop writing “Trump supporters support Trump” stories (it’s been nine years now; we know) and to write about “the stakes not the odds”.