Quote (IceMage @ Jan 27 2024 07:16pm)
I'm not familiar enough with the case to comment on it's validity, I just find it strange that you guys care.
I'll give you the cliffs notes version then to get you up to speed
feel free to ignore most of it, glance it over and click the link for a chuckle
E Jean Carroll was not particularly well known columnist in the 1990s with a focus on that real man-hating type of feminism, the "leave your man" advice type (a section in her book called "What do we need men for? A modest proposal" that satirically says all men should be removed from society). She had long since fallen completely off and was an unknown again, and in 2019 in the runup to the election publicly claimed that at some time in the 1990s donald Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room. She didn't pin it to a specific year at first, much less a date. She gave interviews on media and you can see in real time as she sets off red flags with Anderson Cooper;
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1750935272018121144 And just by coincidence, she happened to be releasing a book at the same time after spending decades in obscurity, and promoted it on the "Trump raped me" tour.
The accusation had three obvious problems. First, it was unfalsifiable. She never specified a date or time, or any specifics of the encounter, or witnesses, or evidence. There was absolutely nothing to be contradicted. Second, it made absolutely zero sense. Donald Trump was still a billionaire playboy at the time dating a long list of supermodels who all universally testify that Trump was a perfect gentleman to them, and E Jean Carroll was not just some radical feminist, but a ~55-60 year old woman with a particularly gaunt and shrewish face. She even claims Trump recognized her- from her columns despite her being a
writer who's only appearance on TV was a brief few call-in shows on a low exposure cable channel for a few months and even if he somehow read feminist columns he still would have no way to know who she was in person. And third, when evidence did emerge it was all casting doubt on her claims. It turns out there's an episode of Law & Order SVU which has a man assaulting a woman in the Bergdorf Goodman changing room, almost perfectly mirroring her claim. In the past decade, she wrote on social media in a chain talking about being willing to have sex with Donald Trump for money, with no reference to any previous experience or assault. And how she was a big fan of the apprentice and wanted to go on his show. And how Trump always traveled with security guards at the time. And how she kept a personal diary at the time, but it had no mention of the event at any point. And how she had an email in 2017 in which in response to an article about Trump, her friend said "This has to stop. As soon as we’re both well enuf to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again.” and Caroll replied “TOTALLY!!! I have something special for you when we meet.”
The social media post by Trump originally at heart of the first case;
Quote
This "Ms. Bergdorf Goodman" case is a complete con job ... I don't know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event. She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, "swooned" her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. ... She has no idea what day, what week, what month, what year, or what decade this so-called "event" supposedly took place. The reason she doesn't know is because it never happened, and she doesn't want to get caught up with details or facts that can be proven wrong. If you watch Anderson Cooper's interview with her, where she was promoting a really crummy book, you will see that it is a complete Scam. She changed her story from beginning to end, after the commercial break, to suit the purposes of CNN and Andy Cooper. ... For the record, E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn't know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance.
The case was entirely in civil court, Carroll only sued Donald Trump for defamation after wealthy liberal backers provided funding for lawyers, saying Trump denying the assault was defamation. The trial first had Biden's DoJ rescind the precedent that a sitting president can't be sued for statements he gives in an official capacity, and the appeals courts declined to rule on it and allowed judge kaplan to summarily strip Trump of privilege. When Carroll made a particularly absurd claim of having a sperm-covered black dress from that day, but then walked it back and didn't follow through, judge kaplan also ignored that and declared DNA evidence irrelevant because it could still be rape even with no sperm detected and forbade mention of DNA evidence at trial. Then judge kaplan refused to allow the interviews by Carroll including that Anderson Cooper clip from being played at trial, while simultaneously allowing the completely unrelated access hollywood tape of Trump saying 'grab them by the pussy' from the first election to be played in court, saying it established a pattern of conduct. As I remind you this is a civil case with two equal standing parties, no defendant. The judge also refused to allow Trump's expert witnesses, made the jury anonymous in an extreme move almost never seen in civil trials, sealed all information about how Carroll's team was being funded by Democratic billionaire and activst Reid Hoffman and refused to allow it at trial. And refused to allow evidence from her anti-male columns/book. When the trial finally started, literally the entire case was E Jean Caroll's storytelling. Her only other 'evidence' was to bring in personal friends (same ones who talked about 'scheming') who say Carroll told them about the assault at the time, again with none of them providing any evidence to support any contemporary knowledge, just their statement now. The judge did allow a highlight reel of her hate mail she received after the accusations, even though this was blatantly immaterial to the trial and prejudicial to an almost laughable degree. I mean, just think about that. They brought in other women who made sexual assault accusations against Trump without evidence and without any personal knowledge of this case, and Carroll wasn't able to come up with a date range for the assault until
after all the evidence was presented, at which point she decided it must have been around 1996 in order to fit what her friends had claimed at trial and because that was the only way Trump could have somehow seen her failed cable show and then recognized her afterwards. The jury ruled that Trump had sexually assaulted her, but not that he had raped her, and that his statements denying it reached the incredibly high actual malice threshold for public figure defamation and awarded $5 million.
I could go on, but the second trial was just a 1:1 rehash of the first with the exact same judge, same claim, same result, saying any time Trump denies that he raped her she can sue for defamation again, and also ruling that even though the jury didn't find 'rape' in the first trial she can argue that sexual assault is rape and therefore denying he raped her is also defamation even though its an accurate description of what the first jury found, but hey that's a NYC judge for ya
Now if you think that's a wall of text, its the length of about 1/100 of the wikipedia article
This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 27 2024 11:24pm