By Mike Huckabee
May 11, 2023
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As you know, President Trump was found liable in a Manhattan court for one count each of battery and defamation in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. They found that he should pay around $5 million --- $3 million for defamation and $2 million for the civil battery charge.
Here are the facts from the NEW YORK POST. I apologize for the sordidness of some of the allegations.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/09/
Trump, who didn’t attend the trial (I’ll get to that), wrote on Truth Social: “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
In 2019, Carroll accused him in her new book of raping her in a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman. In 1996. Well, she THINKS it was 1996. She’s not sure, and she made no police report. It might have been possible for Trump to clear himself with an alibi if she’d just remembered the date! She couldn’t even remember the year. And her confidantes apparently didn’t know, either.
As Alan Dershowitz said, “Those cases should never have been allowed to be brought. The historical purpose of a statute of limitations is to make sure you don’t have to stand trial for something that occurred 25 years ago --- in this case, even more than that. How do you remember things? How do you know where you were? Maybe he was in Europe at the time. She hasn’t even given the dates and the times of the year. It’s a case that normally would be thrown out --- but again, it’s Donald Trump.”
He’s afraid this will hurt Trump with independents, who’ll think “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Sometimes, he said, where there’s smoke, there’s arson. “And I think a lot of these fires have been set politically,” he said.
If you’re not convinced it’s all political, here’s the NEW YORK POST: “Watchers in the court gallery cried tears of joy when the verdict finding Trump liable for sexual abuse was read.”
It’s part of the death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy being used by Trump’s adversaries. Polls now --- for what polls now are worth --- show Trump easily out front for the GOP nomination and even easily ahead of President Biden in a head-to-head contest. (Not that Biden will necessarily be the nominee, but still.) So this relentless lawfare against Trump will continue until we’re all just sick of it, which is the idea. Trump’s enemies hope we grow weary of the constant fight and decide he should stay in Mar-A-Lago --- if he’s not in pre-trial detention.
They might be misreading his supporters, though. After the Mar-A-Lago raid and the indictment of Trump in Manhattan, this appears to be one more banana republic-style maneuver to interfere with the 2024 election, just as there have been attempts in 2016, 2020 and 2022. If Trump can stand up to it, so can we. Who else is better equipped and more motivated to finally drain the swamp good and dry?
Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said after the verdict that they would appeal. “He’s firm in his belief, as many people are, that he can’t get a fair trial in New York City based on the jury pool. I think one could argue that’s an accurate assessment based on what happened today.” In answer to a reporter’s question, he said this would not derail Trump’s run for the nomination.
I understand why Trump might not have wanted to participate in this, but his no-show likely sent the wrong message. It seems he was found liable largely by default. Carroll’s attorney trumpeted the fact that Trump “didn’t even bother” to show up. Trump’s attorneys didn’t call any witnesses, either, or show any evidence, though it’s hard to know what evidence they could’ve presented to prove he DIDN’T do something that happened who-knows-when.
A better idea would have been to show up with full motorcade and make NYC pay millions for all the security and traffic re-routing. He didn’t have to testify, but just to BE THERE would have said plenty.
Trump was not found liable of rape, though Carroll had claimed he raped her. So they must’ve doubted her testimony about it. It doesn’t make sense --- if she was lying about that, how could they believe the rest of it? As Tacopina said after the trial, “Strange verdict. It was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that.”
Of course, being a civil trial, the plaintiff doesn’t have to prove liability “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Just “preponderance of the evidence” will do. The original 2019 suit was just for defamation, when Trump quipped “she’s not my type” after she publicly claimed he raped her. (Really? That’s defamation? Defending yourself against an accusation of rape that the jury apparently didn’t even believe?)
So, why did this case even get to court? As explained in THE EPOCH TIMES: “In 2022, the New York state legislature passed the Adult Survivor Act, which amended state law to give victims of certain sexual offenses a one-year window, beginning on Nov. 24, 2023, to file a civil lawsuit against alleged offenders. Carroll filed a second lawsuit on Nov. 24, 2022, under this Act, which went to trial and resulted in Tuesday’s verdict.”
Kyle Becker tweeted a concise list of ways that the ‘justice’ system has been twisted and weaponized just to go after Donald Trump. It was nice of LIBERTY DAILY to format his series of tweets for easy access, because this is a must-read…
We don’t know if jurors got to see Carroll’s social media posts, but Tacopina (we think it was Tacopina) did unearth some doozies. Carroll is a writer who had a sex advice column in ELLE magazine. Please read these comments of hers and tell us if you’d believe anything she says about sex --- or anything she says about anything.
https://headlineusa.com/trump-
And these, from 2019. (Again, apologies for the language.)
Carroll included the Trump rape story in her 2019 book WHAT DO WE NEED MEN FOR? A MODEST PROPOSAL. Seems as though HE might have had a defamation case.
And in answer to her question about what we need men for, in her case I guess about $5 million.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we found quite a story from Byron York at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER, written right before jury selection, about the origin of Carroll’s defamation lawsuit. He says it arose in conversation at a party at the home of writer Molly Jong-Fast, held in honor of Trump-hater Kathy Griffin. Another Trump-hater, George Conway (Kellyanne’s ex) came up with the idea. Tech billionaire and Trump-hater Reid Hoffman bankrolled her case. York says this case was “pushed forward by a group of politically motivated Resistance figures who have for years been trying to defeat Trump in any way they can.”
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