District Judge Lewis Kaplan has said it multiple times: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Kaplan wrote it in May 2023, when he presided over one of the trials against Trump. And he reminded jurors of the rape this week, during the latest proceedings in the multi-layered, winding rape and defamation cases brought against Trump by Carroll.
Trump and his lawyers have been really pissing off both the judge and the jury with how unseriously they’re treating the proceedings. They’re gonna take two hours (an absurdly short time for a jury) and write a check for $15mil, I bet.
Trump will never pay anyone. They’re going to have to garnish his pension from being president.
I am not a lawyer, but according to this site: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/will-filing-for-bankruptcy-stop-a-civil-lawsuit.html
“Bankruptcy will stop almost all civil litigation matters except for family court cases involving domestic support obligations, at least temporarily.”
He’s looking at about 400 mill from the New York Fraud trial.
This is civil litigation. He’s going to pull the Rudy G. maneuver.
It wouldn’t even be the first time he’s had to declare bankruptcy. For the ultra wealthy, bankruptcy doesn’t mean you’re financially ruined; It just means the bank has a bad day when they find out you aren’t repaying them.
There’s an old saying along the lines of “If you owe the bank $100k and can’t repay it, you have a big problem. If you owe the bank $100M and can’t pay it back, the bank has a big problem.”
Assuming he doesn’t get back in in 2024 (or 2028) and exonerate himself from his own crimes.
The president cannot pardon state level crimes let alone state level civil judgements.
pissing off both the judge and the jury
There’s still one other role for him to piss off if he wants to go for the trifecta.
I think they are likely to return an award for punitive damages that is closer to $150 million.
A few factors:
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Carroll’s attorney Robbie Kaplan made it a point to strategically and repeatedly use Trump’s claims of being a multi-billionaire against him, including in his opening statement where he asked the jury to return punitive damages that would be sure to stop further defamation based on his self-attested net worth.
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After seeing the amount that the jury returned in the Ruby and Shay Moss case against Rudy Giuliani I think that it is reasonable to expect this jury to weigh that in their deliberations, and return a similar or even greater amount in this case due to the actual finding of rape.
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Everybody wants to be king for a day, and jury’s historically punish the fuck out of their peers when they feel they are being disrespectful towards the victim, the court, or the jury itself. In this case I would expect them to throw the book at Trump to make a statement about the power of the jury system in the United States.
I am confident in saying that the award for punitive damages in this case will be far greater than most are expecting. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even more than $150 million. You can come back here and tell me I’m a moron if I got this totally wrong, but I don’t think I do.
