Stormy Daniels’ brief tryst with Donald Trump was free and consensual, but it wound up costing the disgraced ex-president $130,000. That’s the amount Michael Cohen paid Daniels to stay mum about the sexual encounter during the 2016 election. Unfortunately for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, she was successfully sued by Trump for $121,000 in lawyers fees after she lost a defamation suit against him. So, at least financially, the whole thing was close to a wash. Of course, Trump was arrested and faces trial for making the $130,000 payment. We’ll see how that turns out. The trial is currently scheduled in March.
But E. Jean Carroll’s sexual encounter with Trump was not consensual. She has now won not one but two defamation cases against him, and it’s adding up to a lot of money.
A New York jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay a total of $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for ruining her credibility as an advice columnist when he called her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault.
The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation and another $7.3 million.
That’s on top of the $5 million Carroll was awarded in the first defamation case. She definitely is doing her part to take Trump down to the studs. He will want to appeal this ruling but that requires him to post a bond in the full amount. The New York Times says he can borrow money for this purpose rather than pay the full amount up front, but he might have trouble finding a lender eager to take that on. After all, any day now Judge Engoron, who oversaw his New York fraud trial, is likely to ask him to cough up in excess of $350 million in ill-gotten gains, and also prevent him from ever doing business in the state again. He’s not exactly a good credit risk right now.
I particularly enjoyed how Trump refused to offer a defense in the first Carroll defamation case and was quickly found guilty on what was actually an impossible to prove charge. And then he decided he needed to defend himself in the second defamation case only to discover it was too late and his guilt was already established. What a complete tool and fool this man is! And, on top of it, he could have got off with a $5 million penalty, but that’s now grown to nearly $90 million. That’s a hefty price for stupidity.
His only hope now is that the public is even stupider than he is, which actually appears to be the case.
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