Analysis of judge’s 'brutal order' shows how 'punishing' E. Jean Carroll trial will be for Trump

10 January 2024

In addition to four criminal indictments, Donald Trump is facing a variety of civil lawsuits — one of which is writer E. Jean Carroll's second defamation case against the former president and 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, issued a 27-page order on Tuesday, October 9. And the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery analyzes the judge's words and actions in an article published the following day.

Kaplan's order, Pagliery emphasizes, makes its abundantly clear that the case will only get worse for Trump when the trial gets underway.

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"With Donald Trump's second rape defamation trial only one week away," Pagliery explains, "a federal judge has rewarded the billionaire's unceasing legal insolence and delusional defense strategy with a brutal order laying out just how punishing the court battle is going to be. Until recently, the former president's lawyers had been preparing for the upcoming defamation trial as if the first one never happened — seeing it as a chance to rewrite history and try to clear Trump's name after a jury, last year, concluded he sexually assaulted the journalist E. Jean Carroll decades ago."

In the order, Kaplan wrote that "the material facts concerning the alleged sexual assault" against Carroll "already have been determined, and this trial will not be a 'do over' of the previous trial."

Kaplan, the Daily Beast reporter notes, has "reiterated that the jury will merely be deciding how badly to reprimand Trump for dragging Carroll's name through the mud." The judge's order, according to Pagliery, "clarified that Trump will have the obligation — but not the right — to remain silent about nearly everything the billionaire intended to say in court."

"This new jury will see the most damning evidence of Trump's misogyny, from the 'Access Hollywood' tape in which he gloats about how he can 'grab them by the pussy' to the videotaped deposition where he remarks that stars get away with sexual assault 'unfortunately — or fortunately," Pagliery points out. "The previous iteration of this case dealt with the defamatory denials Trump made after leaving office, a trial that cost him $5 million in damages, which he apparently paid."

Pagliery continues, "The second defamation trial, which begins next week, deals with the denials Trump made as U.S. president, with all the additional attention and gravitas his former position of power bestowed upon him at the time he made those comments…. Trump can't even say he didn't believe Carroll was telling the truth about their encounter in the 1990s, the judge wrote. That means Trump's big claims that he plans to finally speak up and testify at this trial — after notably ghosting the first one — might amount to nothing but grandstanding. The calculation has flipped, and Trump potentially stands much more to lose by showing up now that he'll be effectively wearing a courtroom muzzle."

Jose Pagliery's full analysis for The Daily Beast is available at this link (subscription required).

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