Donald Trump: A Massive Legal Problem Is Brewing – Last week, both sides in the rape and defamation trial in which E. Jean Carroll is suing former President Donald Trump rested their cases, although Trump was given a last-minute opportunity to provide testimony.
Trump Misses Deadline for Testimony
However, that Sunday night deadline has passed, and closing arguments in the case were heard Monday, with the jury getting the case as soon as Tuesday, the New York Post reported. The case is a civil lawsuit and not a criminal trial, but if Trump loses the case, it would mark an extraordinary instance of a former president of the United States being deemed a rapist by a court.
Trump did not appear in person for the trial, although the video of a deposition he gave in the case was played during the proceedings. Trump has long denied that he raped Carroll, and his lawyers opted to not put on a defense at trial.
“It’s a disgrace. Frankly, it’s a disgrace that something like this can be brought,” Trump said of the case in the deposition, which was given late last year. He went on to denounce Carroll, his accuser, as a “nut job,” a “whack job” and “mentally sick.” At one point, he was shown a photograph of himself meeting Carroll at a party and said he had confused her with Marla Maples, the second of his ex-wives.
The deposition videos were viewed millions of times during the trial.
During the trial, several other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct, and the infamous “Access Hollywood” comments were entered into the record.
“Well, historically, that’s true with stars,” Trump said in the deposition of his comments on that tape, although Trump, at various times over the years, has implied that the tape was faked.
The Case Against Donald Trump
In the suit, Carroll alleges that she was raped by Trump in 1996 in a New York City store, and also that Trump defamed her after she came forward with the allegation. The suit followed the passage of a 2022 New York law that reopened the statute of limitations for sex abuse cases, a statute that has been used in large part by victims of abuse by priests to sue the Catholic Church.
“The law does not draw a line between different degrees of violence. It totally prohibits all unconsented touching from the least to the most violent that a reasonable person would find offensive. In other words, anything from a gentle but unwanted peck on the cheek to stabbing somebody with a knife could be battery for purposes of a civil case like this one,” Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the case, told the jury in instructions.
The jury will decide the case on the basis of “preponderance of the evidence,” although the standard is higher for the defamation claim.
“Jurors will first be asked to decide whether Carroll proved that Trump committed a battery,” ABC News said of the jury’s instructions. “If so, the jury would be asked to decide what kind – forcible touching, sex abuse or rape – and then consider compensatory and punitive damages.” The defamation case will be decided after that.
Trump does not face the possibility of jail time in the case, although it does stand to hurt him politically if a court rules against him in a rape case, especially with women voters.
“A basic uncertainty has shadowed the court proceedings this week. Does this story amount to a political cataclysm or nothing at all?” The New Yorker wrote of the trial. “If you just describe the situation neutrally, like a news anchor might—a civil suit in which a magazine writer has accused the former President of the United States of rape will go to a jury trial next week—then it certainly sounds like front-page material. And yet it simply hasn’t been.”
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
