Today, Trump got his comeuppance

The bully-in-chief can’t blame Biden

Friends,

Trump has used his courtroom appearances to paint himself as a political martyr targeted by Biden and Democratic prosecutors. These have become essential parts of his political campaign.

Today he was found by a jury — a jury of average Americans, a jury whom Trump’s lawyers, as well as E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers, had initially determined to be impartial — to have acted maliciously in persistently attacking E. Jean Carroll.

Neither Biden nor the Justice Department nor any federal prosecutor had anything to do with this. Today, a jury of Americans gave one of America’s biggest bullies his comeuppance.

They ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape. He continued his attacks in social media posts and at news conferences even during the trial itself.

The verdict was many multiples of the $5 million a separate jury awarded Ms. Carroll last spring after finding that Trump had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s — and had then defamed her in a Truth Social post in October 2022.

Raped her?

Yes, he raped her. After Trump was found liable last spring, Trump’s legal team (and his defenders on Fox News) repeatedly argued that the jurors in that case had stopped short of finding that he raped her.

But when Trump’s lawyers argued that the initial $5 million verdict against Trump was excessive because “sexual abuse” could be as limited as the “groping” of a victim’s breasts, Judge Lewis Kaplan roundly rejected Trump’s motion.

In a ruling that hasn’t received nearly the attention it should, Judge Kaplan wrote:

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

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“This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” Ms. Carroll said in a statement today, thanking her lawyers effusively.

Bullies always think they can win by escalating their bullying. That’s been Trump’s MO for decades. He’s used his supporters to help him escalate his bullying.

He didn’t get away with it this time.

Ms. Carroll testified that Trump’s repeated taunts and ridicule had mobilized many of his supporters. She said she had faced an onslaught of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that frightened her and “shattered” her reputation as a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine. She told the jury she had been attacked on Twitter and Facebook. “I was living in a new universe,” she said.

In addition to the $65 million, jurors awarded Ms. Carroll $18.3 million in compensatory damages for her suffering.

Trump’s bullying continued even during the trial. He repeatedly attacked Carroll online and insulted her at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

Inside the courtroom, Trump muttered “con job” and “witch hunt” so loudly Carroll’s lawyers objected that the jurors could hear him. During Ms. Carroll’s lawyer’s closing argument, he walked out of the courtroom.

Ms. Carroll’s lawyers used these bullying tactics to demonstrate to the jurors that Trump believed he could get away with anything, including continuing to defame Ms. Carroll.

“You saw how he has behaved through this trial. You heard him. You saw him stand up and walk out of this courtroom while Ms. Kaplan was speaking. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”

After the jury’s verdict, Trump said in a Truth Social post that the verdict was “absolutely ridiculous. Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” he said, pledging to appeal. “They have taken away all First Amendment Rights.”

Notably, though, he did not attack Ms. Carroll.

Maybe the rules are starting to apply to Trump?