A verdict has been reached in the Trump defamation case against E.J. Carrol, who accused Donald Trump of rape and sexual assault. A jury has now come back with a verdict, and it's a mixed one.
00:01:15.740So that was apparently a defamation, and according to E. Jean Carroll, she got her life back via this verdict.
00:01:25.780I spoke with the group about this on our members-only group podcast, you could say.
00:01:36.780So if you weren't subscribed, I would recommend that you do that.
00:01:40.620And I actually did talk through this with someone who, you know, has a legal mind,
00:01:47.100and I think I kind of nuanced my views on it a little bit.
00:01:52.680I obviously stand behind what I said about 24 hours ago, but I just wanted to add a little more nuance.
00:02:00.500I was stressing last night that this whole defamation case probably shouldn't see the light of day
00:02:08.160in the sense that you are mixing different thresholds.
00:02:15.480So the threshold for a crime, rape and sexual assault are obviously crimes, is beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:02:22.740But then we're moving, this is a civil trial, it's not a criminal trial.
00:02:29.620And in such a trial, it is, the threshold is more likely than not.
00:02:36.140So I did feel like this was rather contradictory.
00:02:39.140Now, my interlocutor did mention something that is very important.
00:02:46.100And that is that there can be civil trials, even if there's no, civil trials involving what would seem to be a criminal matter.
00:03:02.880Even if that person was not put forward in a criminal trial, and even if he were found not guilty.
00:03:09.980And in fact, there's an extremely famous example, and that is the O.J. Simpson trial.
00:03:15.000So, as I'm sure you know, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in what I think most everyone feels to be a miscarriage of justice back in the 1990s.
00:03:28.260He was found liable for wrongful death in a civil trial, and I think that decision might have led to a lot of his undoing.
00:03:39.800Although, you know, whatever you want to say about O.J., he seems to be back on his feet, putting forth Twitter videos, making bold and accurate predictions on NFL football.
00:03:53.060It's a rather surreal experience watching those.
00:03:55.700But anyway, the whole point is that he was found not guilty, and a civil trial preceded.
00:04:03.500So, perhaps I was kind of overdoing it in stressing that there's this, you know, kind of inherent contradiction.
00:04:13.240I still do think there are contradictions to this.
00:04:16.440I mean, it is very obvious that this is a political hit job, that it is motivated by politics.
00:04:25.820It's funded by Reid Hoffman, among others.
00:04:34.180That being said, I do believe E. Jean Carroll, when she claims that something happened in Bergdorf's in the mid-90s involving Donald Trump,
00:04:50.120and that Donald Trump was behaving like Donald Trump.
00:04:57.180I do think that that is most likely correct.
00:05:01.300So, in New York, rape is defined by inserting the penis in a non-consensual manner into the vagina.
00:05:14.840Now, there are other forms of sexual misconduct, obviously, assaults and harassment and all those kinds of things.
00:05:22.940So, the jury decided that, more likely than not, Donald Trump did not rape E. Jean Carroll.
00:05:36.080And I think that they were probably on to something with that.
00:05:41.680One of the reasons that I do think that E. Jean Carroll is telling the truth is the scenario that she recounted in her memoir just seems very plausible.
00:05:56.540I can see something like this happening.
00:05:58.980Donald Trump is a star, you know, in his estimation.
00:06:02.560He's hanging out at some fancy department store.
00:09:36.200He has a lawyer that's used to this kind of, who's used to this kind of stuff.
00:09:41.400And it just still, the whole thing just strikes me as so convoluted that I find it a little bit difficult to take seriously.
00:09:53.020Also, I think I mentioned last night that, you know, this sets a precedent and it can be used in other different cases.
00:10:01.600It could be used against people who aren't as wealthy and powerful as Donald Trump.
00:10:08.580You know, it does set a precedent, but I'm not sure it would be because I think this was a fairly unique case that was constructed.
00:10:19.700It was a novel case constructed by Roberta Kaplan, among others.
00:10:25.260And it's just so obviously politically motivated that I'm not sure it's going to really be tried again.
00:10:35.720This is the way of using the court system as opposed to the ballot box or using the court system as a way of punishing a political opponent.
00:10:49.220Now, in Trump's case, we did actually use the ballot box and he lost pretty bigly.