No legal expert ever wants to predict what a jury will do, let alone a jury in a highly controversial case. However, legal experts are in agreement that if the case of E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump were to be decided on the basis of how each legal team has comported itself, it would be game over after just three days. Joe Tacopina, Trump’s lead counsel, has been described as “coarse, obnoxious and disrespectful — a perfect mouthpiece for his client,” by columnist Jennifer Rubin. Carroll’s have been effective and credible, as has been the plaintiff herself. Washington Post:
Cross-examination of Carroll began Thursday. Tacopina was probably not the right guy to handle this. Gruff, belittling and heavy-handed, he scored few if any hits and frequently drew rebukes from the judge. Carroll freely admitted her memory holes and tersely pushed back on his insinuations that she was in this for the money. In some sense, her inability to recall specifics such as the date and day of the week made her account even more credible.
The more Tacopina harangued and argued with her, the more he seemed to prove her point: She had feared coming forward all these years because of the bullying and insults she knew she would endure.
As the day wore on, Carroll’s counsel increased the number of objections, most sustained. It seemed that Tacopina was simply getting frustrated in failing to dent Carroll’s credibility. At one point, the judge chided him for getting argumentative. He even instructed Tacopina to “move on.”
The trial will resume Monday. Carroll has taken the worst Trump’s lawyers can throw at her. She remains the poised, credible and somewhat sad, fragile figure she was when the trial began.
Tacopina is coming out of this trial looking very bad. He says he will call no witnesses, and that includes the defendant. Donald Trump. The question now becomes, is Trump wise to stay away from this trial, because if he was there he would only do himself in? Or, is he foolish, because his refusal to defend himself can be construed as an admission of guilt, at worse, or a disrespect for the legal process, at best? For her part, E. Jean Carroll has already won, to a large extent, because she wanted her day in court and she got it. She’s also already won a great deal in the court of public opinion and Tacopina and Trump look like the buffoons they are.
I’ve conducted over 300 jury trials. It’s never easy to tell your client, ‘I’m not doing that,’ or ‘I’m not doing it that way.’ But you just have to whenever you can within the laws of ethics. It appears Trump seeks out lawyers who don’t have this gene in their DNA.
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 1, 2023
Today is Day Four. Day One started out with Tacopina calling Carroll a “liar” “in it for the money.” That’s perfect Trump logic. He’s never done anything wrong, people just accuse him of things because they want his money.
Day two brought more misery for the Trump team. It began with Kaplan rapping Trump’s lawyers for a rant Trump posted on Truth Social, accusing Carroll (again) of making up the charges. Kaplan told Trump’s lawyers this might open “a new source of potential liability.”
Later in the day, the judge again warned Trump’s lawyers that they had better talk to their client, this time regarding an Eric Trump tweet about Carroll’s lawsuit. The judge intimated that other courts and statutes (e.g., intimidation is a crime in New York) could come into play.
You’ve already read about Day Three, when cross-examination began. Now the trial continues. Hopefully, Tacopina will stop the bullying and badgering, seeing as how it hasn’t served him well.
The Carroll verdict, assuming it goes against Trump, may land quite a blow. Jennifer Rubin observed, “his non-appearance tells the jury Trump doesn’t respect the court or them enough to show up.” That’s pretty much the size of it.
Trump has lived his entire life this way. He’s been a sexual predator because he can get away with it. We live in a culture where women who come forward and press charges as rape victims are then again victimized in court. Joe Tacopina has proven that. The woman who was going to take Trump to trial in California for raping her when she was 13 pulled out at the last minute, due to death threats. Carroll, by coming forward and staying the course, is not only getting her day in court but she’s helping other rape victims have the courage to stand up for themselves. This is a landmark case.
He has already fled the country accompanied by his “secret service” agents.
When is the common criminal going to be stripped of his ill gained, taxpayer funded “entitlements “?
We all watch and wait.
Things could be worse. He could have gone out on 5th Ave. and shot somebody.
Has he?
You know something? He might as well. What’s a murder trial when you’ve got a rape trial, an elections interference trial, an insurrection trial, a classified documents trial, a fraud trial. Did I miss any?
I think a couple of civil cases against him by Jan 6 capitol police and Dem lawmakers such as Swalwell are making their way through the court system as we speak.
I would pay money to see the shit gibbon on the stand.
It would be a howler. Just like when he was on Fox News last night giving his version of history and all the great things he did in office.
My husband calls him.”Joey Tinypenis”™. He comes,across as belligerent, misogynist and abusive. I hope they have experts who explain why victims decades later cannot remember the date and day of the week. I lost my first husband on the !Monday before Easter. I have no.idea of the actual date. I just know he died on Monday, was buried on Saturday. I hate Holy Week for that reason.
As for her not reporting–she nailed him.perfectly, pointing out that she feared the police and prosecutor would treat her exactly the way he is now. She also.knew Trump.was rich, powerful, and famous, and he could hire a bus load of attorneys. Instead of his attacks weakening her position, he is making her case for her by intimidating, belittling, and demeaning her.
That is the beauty of this trial so far. Tacopina is actually helping the plaintiff make her case.
Trump is a disaster. No one disputes that. All I can say is his penis size, flaccid or erect, has nothing to do with his abysmal lack of character. As I’m sure your love for your husband isn’t based on his penis size flaccid or erect.
” how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” Bob Dylan
He never had to develop character. Wealth is a curse for some people and he’s one of them. The rest of us build character in the normal give and take of life. We have to learn how to compromise, learn tolerance, restraint, all kinds of things. Trump never did. He’s a bull and the world is his china shop and he has the bank account to pay for the damage.
The only thing you forget is he DID kill hundreds of thousands of citizens by hiding the information on covid he learned from the Israelis in November 2019, admitted everything on tape in February 2020, and didn’t use federal resources to provide testing, vaccines, or PPE resources to the medical community. To make matters even worse, he went on TV with lies and ludicrous treatments for a year. When he got sick, he received the kind of treatment unavailable to the rest of us, and hid that. Shooting a person on fifth Avenue is small potatoes compared to the number he is directly responsible for killing. The killing still continues because, by the time Biden took over, there was a huge cult of science deniers, which has allowed the virus to spread and mutate. There is no way to measure the number of deaths he’s responsible for. FACT.