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GOP
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It looks like E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump are not going to settle out of court, so the actual trial began yesterday with Carroll taking the stand and claiming that Donald Trump raped her in the mid 1990s in a New York department store. Trump has called her a liar so she sued him for defamation. Trump said that a rape was not possible because "she wasn't his type." However, during his deposition, he was shown a photo of her and asked if he knew her. He said sure and identified the woman in the photo as his second wife, Marla Maples. So even though he said Carroll wasn't his type, he did marry someone who looked enough like her that he couldn't distinguish her from someone he married.
Since her appearance is already an issue here, what does she look like? She is now no spring chicken. She will turn 80 later this year. On the left below is the photo the media has been using of her in most stories about the case for the past year or more. On the right is how she appeared yesterday. If Trump's lawyer says or implies that Trump couldn't have raped her because she is so ugly, that may not fly given how she appeared in court. We don't know if she has been working with a jury consultant, but one could imagine such a consultant telling her to look attractive in court to deflect the "not my type" argument.
Carroll said that she met Trump at the revolving door at Bergdorf Goodman's on a Thursday evening in 1996. She was apparently enough of his type that he began talking to her and got her to go with him to the ladies lingerie department to help pick out a gift for a woman. Since she was an advice columnist, she was taken by Trump, then a regular fixture in the New York tabloids, asking her for advice. She knew who he was and thought the interaction would result in a funny story. She was laughing with him as she and he entered a dressing room and he closed the door. Then he kissed her hard and, she says, inserted his penis into her while she struggled to get away. That's pretty much the definition of rape.
Carroll has said that she told two friends about the incident the same day. Carroll wants them to testify in court and the judge has ruled that they may testify under oath in court. He also ruled that her lawyers may play the infamous Access Hollywood recording for the jury."
It will be interesting to see how Trump's lead lawyer, Joe Tacopina, handles the defense. He can try to bully Carroll and the two witnesses, but that might actually backfire with the jury.
This is a civil trial and the standard of proof in civil trials is "preponderance of evidence," not "beyond all reasonable doubt." In other words, Carroll's lawyers merely have to make her story more convincing than Trump's. It need not be bulletproof. If her two witnesses hold up well under cross examination and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is one of the best around, does a good job discussing the photo in which Trump thought Carroll was his second wife, we don't see what Tacopina can do. Law students are supposedly told: "If the law is on your side, pound the law. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If neither is on your side, pound the table." We expect to see some table pounding in the next week or two. (V)