Trump keeps digging himself deeper into abyss in Carroll defamation lawsuit: legal expert

26 January 2024

After a New York City jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million in her first civil defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump in May 2023, the former president could have cut his losses, moved on and kept quiet about the case. Instead, Trump continued to angrily rail against Carroll — and a separate jury has been hearing evidence in Carroll's second defamation lawsuit against him.

MSNBC's Lisa Rubin offered legal analysis of Carroll's lawsuits during a Friday, January 26 appearance on "Morning Joe," laying out some reasons why Trump keeps making things worse and worse for himself with the former Elle Magazine columnist.

Rubin, who was in the courtroom when Trump testified on January 25, told "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and their colleague Willie Geist, "It was extraordinarily tense and intense, Willie, when Donald Trump took the stand…. He doesn't understand that litigation is essentially a well-regulated game, and it has rules. And he and his lawyers have repeatedly not played by those rules — and those have consequences."

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The MSNBC legal expert went on to stress that the jury isn't deciding whether or not Trump defamed Carroll — that matter has already been decided by the first jury. What remains to be seen is how much more money Trump will have to pay Carroll, who alleges that Trump tried to rape her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1996.

Rubin explained, "Today's jury, the decision for them turns on not whether Donald Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll, but how much damage he did to her — not only by making his initial statements in June of 2019 when he was still president, but then continuing to double down on those statements for years thereafter, starting after the verdict last May when he went on CNN and denied it on stage with Kaitlan Collins. And then, (Trump) has continued to do it almost daily since."

The MSNBC legal analyst continued, "We obviously have seen footage of him doing it last week in New Hampshire. We have numerous and copious Truth Social posts in which he is doing it again and again and again. And the plaintiff's lawyers here were very successful in introducing some of the worst of those statements to this jury."

Rubin noted that Carroll and her attorneys have demonstrated that she has received "rape threats and death threats…. almost daily since his defamation began four years ago, roughly — four plus years ago."

The jurors, according to Rubin, will be asked to decide: "What will it take to make Donald Trump stop? How much will it take in punitive damages?"

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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