In her closing arguments to the jury yesterday, E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan pretty much nailed it in her description of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and why the jury should award her hefty damages.
At the end of her closing, Roberta Kaplan urged jurors to hold Trump accountable – and that the only way to make him follow the law and stop defaming Carroll would be a hefty penalty.
“At the first trial between Ms Carroll and Mr Trump … Donald Trump didn’t even bother to show up,” Kaplan said. But at this trial, where the issue is money, Trump decided to attend, she noted.
“What does that mean? It means that the one thing Donald Trump cares about is money,” she said. “While Donald Trump may not care about the law, while he certainly does not care about the truth, he does care about money.
“The question for you as a jury is this: given Donald Trump’s insistence on continuing to defame Ms Carroll and considering his immense wealth, how much will it take to make him stop?
“He thinks the rules that govern everyone else don’t apply to him,” Kaplan added.
“You actually have the opportunity, maybe even the responsibility, to put an end to this right now with this verdict by requiring Donald Trump to pay an amount of money large enough for him – and I repeat, large enough for him – that it will finally make him stop.
“Now is the time to make him pay for it and now is the time to make him pay for it dearly.”
SSAT views money as a measure of a person’s worth which is why he consistently inflates the amount of his own wealth, as was seen in his other trial for fraud that was brought by New York’s attorney general Letitia James. Taking SSAT’s dubious claims of his own ‘immense wealth’ at face value in order to suggest that a large penalty was necessary to deter him in future was a nice touch by Kaplan.
I suspect there is one other thing that SSAT cares about, and that is staying out of prison. Hopefully another trial treats this matter.
If I correctly read the headlines on the news aggregator clickbait sites, ex-Pres Powderface stomped out of the courtroom while Kaplan delivered her summary, then walked back in to hear his own legal flack’s finale.
That must have endeared him to the jury more than even the soaring oratory of his closing testimony. The courtroom audience will surely brag to their grandchildren of having seen these historic moments.
Alas, oddschecker.com seems to track only elections, indictments, and veep candidates -- future free-market advocates in office must move to legalize betting on court verdicts too!
The verdict will be read today also, deliberations only took 2 hours. I expect this means that the penalty will either by very near what E. Jean Carroll asked for or very near the minimum.
Verdict is $83 million, well above what E. Jean Carroll asked for.
And of course Trump is appealing the decision. Delay delay delay. Hardly a surprise.
—
Oh, and in my estimation, a plausible thesis: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/trump-three-minutes-stand-point-explained.html
Couple of extracts:
Slate might be right , narcissistic people don’t care about whether they are right or wrong. They do care about how they look or they care about getting their own way!