All Tuesday morning, former President Donald Trump used social media to assault author E. Jean Carroll.
By Tuesday afternoon, it was a part of the courtroom report in her newest defamation trial towards him.
An legal professional for Carroll, Shawn Crowley, nodded to Trump’s diatribe in her opening statements as she advised a panel of New York City jurors that Trump has publicly smeared her consumer ever since she got here ahead to accuse him of sexual assault.
Carroll maintains that Trump raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a Manhattan division retailer, within the mid-Nineteen Nineties; he has denied any wrongdoing.
Her story shouldn’t be at challenge within the trial — quite, the jurors might want to resolve how a lot Trump ought to pay for allegedly damaging her fame.
“How much money will it take to make him stop?” Crowley reportedly stated on Tuesday.
Trump’s incendiary remarks haven’t stopped “to this day, literally, to this day,” Crowley stated, based on New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman. (Video cameras weren’t allowed within the courtroom.)
Among dozens of posts to his Truth Social web site, Trump wrote, “It is my duty to America to right this egregious wrong, a case which was started based on no facts, no dates, no nothing, just fabricated lies and political shenanigans.” He additionally posted screenshots of outdated tweets wherein Carroll talked about intercourse or relationships.
Though Trump was seated in courtroom behind Carroll for jury choice, he left for a presidential marketing campaign occasion in New Hampshire earlier than opening arguments commenced.
Crowley argued that Trump’s previous feedback have led to demise threats and hateful remarks from his legions of supporters.
An legal professional for the previous president, Alina Habba, countered that Carroll’s star has solely risen since she accused Trump.
A special jury determined final 12 months that Trump was accountable for the sexual abuse of Carroll. Though the jury didn’t discover that Trump had raped her underneath the letter of the regulation, the choose within the present case, Lewis Kaplan, wrote that the rape declare was “substantially true under common modern parlance.”
In the earlier case, which was introduced underneath a New York state regulation permitting sexual assault survivors a quick window to file civil lawsuits towards their attackers, jurors awarded Carroll $2 million for the sexual abuse discovering and $3 million for Trump’s defamatory feedback. Trump is now interesting that call.
The present case was filed in 2019, however held up for years as a result of Trump group’s authorized maneuvering.
Need assist? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s web site.
