Shortly after we arrived in Arizona, the author E.J. Carroll won a big damage award from a jury as compensation for defamatory remarks made about her by the former President Donald Trump. She actually successfully sued him twice! The second jury awarded her $83 million after the second trial. Immediately after the first trial, Trump defamed her again, eliciting a second trial, and second multi-million-dollar award for damages.
Shortly after the second trial was over, she was interviewed by Rachel Maddow on television together with her two female attorneys. This must have driven Trump nuts to be bested by 3 women!
Carroll is an 80-year-old author who had been sexually abused by Donald Trump. That was determined by the jury in a private tort trial. It was not a criminal trial. The government’s Department of Justice did not start the claim. This was not a case of the “deep state” nor “started by Biden’s “corrupt Department of Justice” as Trump has so quick to claim as a result of other hearings. This was a case of 2 independent juries, and not biased Democrats, or liberal media, deciding that Trump had sexually abused this woman and then told lies about what he had done. And they were so disappointed with what he had done and said that they awarded her $83 million as compensation for his bad behaviour.
Carroll admitted she was terrified before the trial. She was so scared she lost her voice and could not speak. But she had been sexually abused by Donald Trump and did not want to let him get away with it. This took tremendous courage because Trump is a significant foe. But as Carroll said triumphantly on the Rachel Maddow show “We’ve planted our flag. We’ve stood up to the man…He is not there…He is like a rhino snorting.”
At the trial Carroll and everyone who watched it quickly realized Trump was a bully, and like so many bullies “he was nothing. We don’t need to be afraid of him.” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said after the verdict had been rendered, “We can stand up to the US’s biggest bully. We are not afraid of him.” The other lawyer for Carroll, Shawn Crowley who gave the summation to the jury asked them to consider “How much does he have to pay in order to stop him.” The first verdict was $5 million in the first case. That was not enough to stop him. But Trump could not keep quiet and defamed her a second time right after the first verdict. He just refused to follow the rules. Crowley said about the jury, “They just saw it with their own eyes.”
Roberta Kaplan, the other lawyer for Carroll, said,
“Our thesis in this case was that Donald Trump was a bully who is incapable of following the rules. Then during the trial he acted like a bully and showed that he was incapable of following the rules. We almost didn’t need to say anything. The jury just watched him.”
I wish the Trumpsters had seen him. The case exposed the former president as a weak bully!
I know some Americans like bullies. They want a bully as President. They want a strong man, but I really think a majority don’t like bullies. Let’s wait and see. The election will tell that story.