(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Yesterday, Donald Trump lastly made his case to the Second Circuit as to why the $5 million E. Jean Carroll defamation and sexual assault verdict must be overturned. It’s a Festivus Airing of Grievances that’s quick on legislation and lengthy on bullshit.
Trump and his legal professionals launch into an prolonged howling rant about Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial and was so imply to them. It is nearly shockingly disingenuous in its distortion of the trial report. For occasion, Trump complains that he was not allowed to introduce DNA proof from the costume Carroll claims to have worn on the day he assaulted her:
Having claimed publicly that she possessed President Trump’s DNA from the costume she allegedly wore on the day she doesn’t bear in mind, Plaintiff didn’t litigate her entitlement to a DNA pattern from President Trump and he or she offered no DNA proof.
In level of truth, Trump refused to undergo a DNA check in 2019 when Carroll filed her unique state go well with, and when the New York trial courtroom ordered him to do it in 2020, he had Attorney General Bill Barr take away the case to federal courtroom underneath the Westfall Act and search to have it dismissed. Trump refused one other request for a DNA pattern in February of 2022. He solely returned to the DNA difficulty in February of 2023, after discovery had closed and simply two months earlier than the trial, when instantly he demanded to take such a check, or alternatively to current proof at trial that Carroll herself had refused to permit him to. Now he argues that the trial courtroom abused its discretion by refusing to let him to wield his personal refusal to adjust to discovery as a weapon towards the plaintiff.
He performs an identical recreation with the Access Hollywood tape, which the courtroom initially admitted underneath Rule 415(a) as “evidence that the party committed any other sexual assault or child molestation.”
Following the trial, the district courtroom denied President Trump’s movement pursuant to Rule 59 for a discount within the jury’s damages award. SPA.163. In that ruling, apparently for the primary time, the courtroom knowledgeable the events that the Access Hollywood recording had been admitted pursuant to Rule 404(b) slightly than Rule 415—a ruling Plaintiff doesn’t seem to have sought and which calls into query all of Plaintiff’s propensity arguments based mostly on that proof. SPA.180 n.20.
ROLL TAPE!
[T]he Court initially decided that the Access Hollywood tape was admissible on the bottom {that a} jury fairly may discover it was proof that Mr. Trump “committed any other sexual assault” pursuant to Rule 415. At trial, nonetheless, it grew to become clear that reliance on Rule 415 was pointless as a result of the video was provided for a objective aside from to point out the defendant’s propensity to commit sexual assault. Instead, it was provided – as Ms. Carroll’s counsel argued in rebuttal summation – as “a confession.” Given that Mr. Trump states within the video that he “just start[s] kissing” ladies with out “even wait[ing]” and {that a} “star” (reminiscent of himself) may “grab [women] by the pussy,” it “has the tendency to make [the] fact [of whether he sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll] more or less probable than it would be without the evidence” as a result of one of many ladies he referred to within the video may have been Ms. Carroll. Fed. R. Evid. 401. See additionally, e.g., United States v. Cordero, 205 F.3d 1325 (second Cir. 2000) (unpublished opinion) (“Proof of similar acts may be admitted so long as such evidence is offered ‘for any purpose other than to show a defendant’s criminal propensity.’”) (quotation omitted); Woolfolk v. Baldofsky, No. 19-CV-3815(WFK) (ST), 2022 WL 2600132, at *2 (E.D.N.Y. July 8, 2022) (“Evidence of prior crimes, wrongs, or acts, however, may be admissible if offered ‘for any purpose other than to show a defendant’s criminal propensity, as long as the evidence is relevant and satisfies the probative-prejudice balancing test of Rule 403.’”) (quotation omitted). Accordingly, the Court didn’t embody the Access Hollywood tape in its directions to the jury on the proof of Mr. Trump’s alleged sexual assaults of different ladies, and neither celebration objected to its exclusion from that portion of the cost. [Citations omitted.]
So the tape got here in underneath the decrease evidentiary commonplace of Rule 404, Carroll didn’t get the Rule 415 jury instruction, nobody objected, and now Trump needs the case reversed as a result of after the trial the courtroom pointed that out. Cool!
The attraction additionally seeks to relitigate (once more!) the admission of proof by two different Trump accusers, Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, as a result of Trump tried however did not seize them by the … you realize:
The district courtroom centered on claimed violations of Florida legislation, and erroneously discovered that Stoynoff’s allegations have been ample to satisfy the components of Rule 413(d) that require contact with a person’s “genitals or anus.” See Fed. R. Evid. 413(d)(2)-(3).7 The district courtroom acknowledged that “kissing [Stoynoff] without her consent . . . would not satisfy any part of Rule 413(d),” and as an alternative centered on Stoynoff’s use of the phrase “grope” throughout her deposition. SPA.31-32, SPA.32 n.25, SPA.95 n.4. The courtroom acknowledged that, absent extra, “Rule 413(d) is not that broad” in order to succeed in alleged “groping” by itself. SPA.32. But the courtroom then strained to carry Stoynoff’s story inside the ambit of the “sexual assault” definition by reasoning that the Access Hollywood recording, which shouldn’t have been admitted, and testimony from Leeds, which additionally shouldn’t have been admitted, may assist an inference that there was an “ultimate goal” of constructing contact with “Ms. Stoynoff’s most private parts” in an “unoccupied room” at Mar-a-Lago.
Because it doesn’t depend if the butler walks in and also you don’t truly handle to get your hand all the way in which up her skirt.
Also it doesn’t depend in an airplane which can or might not have been flying over worldwide waters:
The district courtroom relied on Rule 413(d)(1), which, as pertinent right here, applies to “any conduct prohibited by 18 U.S.C. chapter 109A.” The courtroom reasoned that Leeds’ testimony adequately described violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2241(a) and 2244(a), that are a part of chapter 109A. SPA.27 n.12. The deadly flaw on this reasoning is that these provisions are restricted to conduct undertaken within the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” as outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 7, and prisons. Airspace shouldn’t be a part of the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction” except the airplane is “in flight over the high seas, or over any other waters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States. . . . .” 18 U.S.C. § 7(5). The district courtroom didn’t tackle this requirement, and the report doesn’t assist it as a result of Leeds testimony was so imprecise that she couldn’t even recall her embarkation level.
These arguments are unhealthy, and they need to really feel unhealthy!
Carroll v. Trump II [SDNY Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Second Circuit Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she co-hosts the Opening Arguments podcast and writes the Law and Chaos substack.
