Legal expert explains 'real shock' of Trump’s Carroll verdict appeal: 'She’ll sue me now'

10 September 2024

Ahead of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris' first presidential debate Tuesday night, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin explains why the showdown "could be the first time in American history a major party nominee's debate performance helps nudge a potential defamation plaintiff from press conference to court."

Rubin points to the former president's hearing last week, in which his lawyers argued to appeal TRump's defamation verdict in his case against journalist E. Jean Carroll.

In a Sunday, September 8 op-ed, Rubin noted two "chilling acts" from Trump during the hearing, writing, "First, while still standing, he wheeled around and surveyed the gallery of assembled press and members of the public. Eyes narrowed, he glowered in an echo of trial days past. Then, taking his seat at the head of a table immediately behind his legal team, he turned to his right, seeming to appraise a tall blonde seated at a table directly across the room."

Carroll, Rubin described, "in a nipped-waist skirt suit with her hair tied back with a girlish, satiny bow, stared straight ahead, just as she had for nearly all of her two trials."

However, the legal expert wrote on Tuesday that the appeal "turned out to be much less about Carroll herself than another octogenarian, Jessica Leeds. Shortly after the 'Access Hollywood' tape was leaked in 2016, Leeds alleged that an 'octopus'-like Trump groped her breasts and reached under her skirt as they sat in adjoining seats in the first-class cabin of an airplane in the late 1970s."

Rubin then emphasized:

But the real shock came hours later when, holding court at Trump Tower, the former president decided to attack Leeds, insisting 'she made up the story,' and continuing, in part:

So think of the impracticality of this. I'm famous. I'm in a plane. People are coming into the plane, and I'm looking at a woman, and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening? What are the chances? And frankly, I know you're going to say, 'It's a terrible thing to say,' but it couldn't have happened. It didn't happen, and she would not have been the chosen one.

"Perhaps realizing what he had said," Rubin continued, "Trump ruefully concluded, 'Now I assume she’ll sue me now for defamation.'"

The legal correspondent points then to Harris'' "30-plus-year history in public service," which "includes years of prosecuting sex crimes," before raising the question: "Is it likely that somewhere, somehow, she'll bring up the panoply of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault?"

Rubin says, "I'd bet on it — and I'd also bet on Trump lashing out at one or more of those accusers."

The MSNBC legal correspondent's full op-ed is available at this link.

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