The jury in the trial took only about two hours to come back with a verdict that said that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) has to pay her $83 million. It consists of $7.3m in compensatory damages, $11m to repair her reputation, and $65m in punitive damages. He has, of course, said that he will appeal.
The punitive damages are to make SSAT shut up.
Even on Fox News, a rightwing network generally supportive of the former president, John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, saw nothing but bad news.
“The whole point of these unprecedented damages is to tell Donald Trump to shut up,” Yoo said.“You could think of it this way: every time Donald Trump wants to insult [E] Jean Carroll, he’s gonna have to write a $40m check for each sentence. That’s how bad this is.
“I can’t believe his lawyers haven’t succeeded in just telling him, ‘Campaign for president, run for president, make your accusations about a two-tiered justice system. But leave this alone.’”
It looks like the antics of SSAT inside and outside the courtroom that so irritated the judge did not endear him to the jury either. Neither did the obnoxious behavior of his lawyer Alina Habba who seemed to think that her audience was the MAGA cult instead of the nine people in the jury box.
In a recent interview with some MAGA-friendly person, Habba was asked whether she would like to be pretty or smart. She instantly replied that she would like to be pretty because you can fake being smart. Well, maybe some people can fake being smart, but she is clearly not one of them. For example, on Monday, she told the judge that she was feeling unwell and had been exposed to people with Covid and asked that the proceedings for the next day be canceled. It was duly done. But then on Tuesday evening, she was seen at a victory party in New Hampshire following the primary election. Judges do not like lawyers lying to them and she is lucky that he did not reprimand her for that.
Observers were astounded at the level of her incompetence, down to basic knowledge of courtroom proceedings.
After the verdict, Habba sounded off to the media. She is mad because the judge did not allow her to re-litigate the issue of assault that the first jury had already decided.
Habba not happy pic.twitter.com/kIr5iLlMon
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 26, 2024
SSAT thinks he can fake anything. I guess it rubbed off on Habba. It’s refreshing when narcissists get their comeuppance.
Two points:
1. I’m surprised it was so little -- I figure the jury were MAGAites. Even the low-ball estimate of his net worth by Forbes was over two and a half BILLION. I have no idea what my net worth is, but the AVERAGE net worth of a person my age in the UK is about £100k -- skewed upwards by a few billionaires, obvs, but let’s stick with me being worth about £100k. Now picture me in court for what Trump has done -- the rape is proven, that’s a done deal I can’t argue with it, and only thing the jury have to decide is how much to fine me to stop me repeatedly defaming the rape victim. And the number they come up with? A little under £3,500. Admittedly not nothing… but I take home more than that after taxes every month. I couldn’t see it slowing me down if some woman had irked me that much. Anyone crowing about how much this is and how now he’ll have to shut up hasn’t done the maths.
2. Crowing over the amount is all very well, but let’s see how much of it he ever pays out, eh?
IMHO I think he’s trying to use Habba’s incompetence as an excuse to appeal the verdict. It’s his typical delaying tactic . He definitely wants this to happen after the election. I don’t think it’s going to work this time because he has to put the money into escrow to appeal. I’m starting to get why tacopina opted out of the sh*tshow .
Really, part of Trump’s problem is that he is an absolutely horrible client, disobeying lawyer’s instructions, unable to shut up, hates being told what to do or feeling like other people think they’re smarter than him… and that’s even before you get to his history of not paying people.
The end result is that nobody who isn’t already ‘in the cult’ would want to be his lawyer at this point. Once you limit the potential lawyers to those willing to work with him, and the sorts of Federalist Society lawyers who are ideologically motivated for this were more trained for becoming judges, legislators, or think tank members rather than trial judges operating in someone else’s courtroom, so frankly he wouldn’t even be getting the best of the Federalist Society members.
Just watched LegalEagle’s video on this:
Even the low-ball estimate of his net worth by Forbes was over two and a half BILLION.
How old is that estimate? And does that include his debts, both good and bad?
Raging Bee, with my select/context click/search skills, it took me under 5 seconds to find this:
https://www.forbes.com/profile/donald-trump/
“$2.6B
Real Time Net Worth as of 2/1/24
#1218 in the world today”
(so easy!)