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

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.

For decades, the goal of the anti-abortion forces was to overturn the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court precedent that said that women had a constitutional right to get an abortion subject to certain limits. Anti-abortion zealots felt that those limits were too lax. They wanted a total ban on abortions and with the overturn of Roe, much more restrictive bans could be enacted by state legislatures. Indeed many legislatures in red states had already drafted those bills and were just waiting for the opportunity to pass them.

And it played out just as expected with red states across the nation passing sweeping legislation that made getting abortions all but impossible in those states. What was unexpected (at least by me) was the widespread backlash that this provoked all across the nation. As is often the case, it is only when a right is taken away that people realize how much they value it. It turns out that a majority of people, while they may not go all the way with unlimited abortion access at any time during the pregnancy, were highly uncomfortable with either total bans or with restrictions that made it far too onerous to obtain. As a result, we saw popular referenda overturning such restrictive laws even in deep red states.

So now the anti-abortion forces that for so long had been on the offensive, now find themselves on the defensive and are seeking to promote the idea that. they are not zealots who want to criminalize women who seek abortions and the doctors who provide them. They now seek to project a kindler, gentler image.
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In the defamation case against him, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) was so disruptive during the testimony of E. Jean Carroll that it clearly exasperated the federal district judge Lewis Kaplan, so much so that he admonished him.

When Carroll first took the stand, Trump could be seen whispering to his lead attorney, Alina Habba. He sat with slightly hunched shoulders as Carroll testified.

As Carroll spoke, Trump complained audibly and appeared to double down on defamatory denials, her lawyer said during a morning break in the proceedings.

“Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things throughout Ms Carroll’s testimony,” said attorney Shawn Crowley.

“It’s loud enough for us to hear it,” Crowley said, so “I imagine it’s loud enough for the jury to hear it.”
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The lawyer for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) asked the judge for permission for SSAT to speak for two or three minutes during closing arguments and the judge asked “Do you promise to just comment on the facts and the law?”. But then SSAT immediately started speaking without answering and did his usual rigamarole about this being a persecution by the prosecution and the judge. SSAT spoke for five minutes before the judge cut him off.

I am not sure what the point of this was other than for SSAT to let off steam. After all, there was no jury to convince. All it does is further tick off the judge who is going to make the final determination of the size of the penalty.

Yesterday we saw another attempt by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) to turn the legal system into a circus. All witness testimony in the fraud trial involving his business enterprises that was brought by the attorney general of the state of New York Letitia James, and which is being conducted in a Manhattan courthouse presided over by judge Arthur Engoron, is over and all that remains is the summing up by the two sides. Note that Engoron had already ruled that the documentary evidence had established fraud and this trial was to determine the size of the penalty. James had initially asked for $250 million and then raised it to $370 million.

SSAT said that he wanted to give his side’s closing argument, in addition to his attorneys. I do not think that this was because he thought his attorneys were incompetent, although they apparently forgot to check the box at the beginning that asked for a jury trial and thus this was a bench trial to be judged exclusively by the judge. That did not prevent SSAT from repeatedly whining how he was being deprived of his constitutional right to be tried by a jury even though that right has to be requested and he did not do so. I think that he may have not wanted to have a jury at all, anticipating that he would lose and thinking that it would be easier to argue that the judge was biased against him rather than a jury.
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For the longest time, many police officers who abuse ordinary people during their interactions with the public have been shielded from repercussions under what is known as ‘qualified immunity‘ for their actions.

Qualified immunity is a type of legal immunity that protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right.
…

When determining whether a right was “clearly established,” courts consider whether a hypothetical reasonable official would have known that the defendant’s conduct violated the plaintiff’s rights. Courts conducting this analysis apply the law that was in force at the time of the alleged violation, not the law in effect when the court considers the case.
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Although qualified immunity frequently appears in cases involving police officers, it also applies to most other executive branch officials. While judges, prosecutors, legislators, and some other government officials do not receive qualified immunity, most are protected by other immunity doctrines.

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It looks like the jury was well and truly angered by the way Rudy Giuliani treated the two poll workers Ruby Freeman daughter Shaye Moss in Georgia and unanimously ordered him to pay them whopping damages, well above the $48 million their lawyer suggested.

Giuliani said that he will appeal but then proceeded to absurdly claim that he could still prove his claims.

Giuliani, meanwhile, doubled down on his false claims about Freeman and Moss, saying again that he had evidence they were true.

“The absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding where I’ve not been able to offer one piece of evidence in defense, which I have a lot,” Giuliani said in a short press gaggle, promising to appeal the result.

“So I am quite confident when this case gets before a fair tribunal it will be reversed so quickly that it will make your head spin and the absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.”

He also continued to insist that his claims about the two women were justified. “I have no doubt that my comments were made and they were supportable and they are supportable today,” he said.

He has had plenty of opportunities to provide the evidence and prove his case and still has not done so. Even his lawyer did not bring up that defense in this trial, because Giuliani had in an earlier proceeding conceded that he had defamed the two women. While his lawyer expressed some contrition on his behalf, Giuliani seems to be living in a dream world where he thinks his lies will be believed.

Giuliani refused to turn over documents as part of the case and conceded earlier this year that he made false statements about the women. Howell found him liable of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question for the jury to decide was how much in damages Giuliani should pay.

Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, conceded to jurors in his opening statement that his client had done something wrong by making false statements. But over the course of the week, he sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment that resulted from the false statements. He also argued that the tens of millions of dollars they requested were not proportional to the harm they had suffered.

I really think Giuliani is delusional.