For those keeping an eye on Donald Trump’s many legal dilemmas, it’s a strange period of time. We are, after all, waiting to hear word on the fate of the former president’s controversial family business, which has been accused of systemic fraud. We’re also waiting to learn whether a federal appeals court will endorse the Republican’s theory that he is effectively above the law.
While we’re at it, there’s also a pending Supreme Court case about whether Trump is eligible for the 2024 ballot in light of his efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election defeat.
But it was against this backdrop that the former president also spent much of the week in a New York courtroom, where he suffered another dramatic defeat. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump must pay writer E. Jean Carroll over $83 million in damages for repeatedly defaming her, a jury found Friday. … The award included $11 million for damage to Carroll’s reputation, $7.3 million for emotional harm and other damages, and $65 million in punitive damages.
It did not take the New York jury long to arrive at its conclusion: Deliberations led to a verdict in under three hours.
Readers will be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. After all, as regular readers know, it was last year when the writer won a civil case against the former president: A jury found the Republican liable for sexually abusing Carroll, and jurors awarded the writer $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.
The jury did not find the defendant liable for rape, though a judge later concluded that the former president, for all intents and purposes, “‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
This was not, however, the final word on the subject. Trump also faced a second defamation trial, stemming from comments he made about Carroll in 2019.
As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, because of the outcome of the first trial, these latest proceedings were “only about damages for other similar defamatory statements.”
After his initial defeat, the presumptive Republican nominee responded to the outcome of the trial with a missive on his social media platform that read in its entirety, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE — A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”
I have a hunch he knows who Carroll is now.
As for the future, within minutes of the verdict, Trump returned to his platform, said he would appeal, and blamed President Joe Biden, who had nothing to do with the civil case. This time, however, he did not reference Carroll.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
