'Near limitless risk': How Trump’s defamation trial 'could mark a turning point' for his pockets

As the end of veteran journalist E. Jean Carroll's defamation trial against Donald Trump nears its end, Daily Beast politics investigative reporter Jose Pagliery raised the question, just how much money would it take for the ex-president to stop defaming the longtime advice columnist?

Pagliery notes during Trump's other civil trial — the now $370 million New York fraud case against him — "$15,000 in court fines proved insufficient to stop Trump from insulting the state judge’s law clerk. Only the ominous threat of throwing him in jail seemed to work."

This bears the important question of whether there is an amount of money that would prevent Trump from "continuing to insult the journalist who accused him of rape," the Beast reporter emphasizes.

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He submits that "the next few weeks could mark a turning point. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron is about to issue a judgment that, in part, seeks to punish Trump for routinely lying to banks—and that figure could go north of the $370 million requested by the state’s Attorney General. The judge is now grappling with how to deter a billionaire from flouting the law with impunity."

Pagliery notes, "In the legal realm, punitive damages are quite different from compensatory damages, which are the actual damages someone suffered. By contrast, punitive damages are meant to be a punishment that serves as a severe lesson to the transgressor," as they tend to be "sky high."

Furthermore, "It’s clear that, if Trump is going to actually stop smearing Carroll, the sum will have to be much higher than it was last time," Pagliery writes, adding, "At the first iteration of this trial, the jury awarded Carroll $5 million, but the punitive damages portion was only a tiny fraction of that, set at $280,000. It clearly wasn’t enough to make him shut up."

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If the punitive damages are much higher this time around, the politics reporter notes, "The rich usually understand the near limitless risk that comes with this kind of retaliatory discipline, which is the danger of handing jurors a blank check."

For now, Pagliery emphasizes Trump "commands a massive real estate portfolio, still proudly declares himself a billionaire, and is sustained by a political war chest that he uses for legal fees. That’s what jurors will contend with when figuring out how to correct his increasingly hostile behavior—if they even can."

Pagliery's full report is here (subscription required).