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Thank You, Stormy Daniels -- For Letting Us See Trump Being Trump

It wasn’t a crime to meet a woman who acts in pornographic movies at a golf tournament. It wasn’t a crime to hit her up, so to speak, and invite her to have dinner later with you at your hotel. It wasn’t a crime to have failed to inform her that the dinner would be in your hotel room. It wasn’t a crime to greet her at the door in a pair of satin pajamas. It wasn’t a crime that you changed into regular clothes when she teased you about trying to imitate the lifestyle of Hugh Hefner

Chatting with the woman about her profession in the porn trade, it wasn’t even a crime to dangle the suggestion that she would make a good contestant on your hit television show, The Apprentice, as your quid for a yet unspoken quo. That’s the way a lot of business opportunities happen – you meet someone, you get to know them a little, and it occurs to you that they would be a good fit in your business endeavor.

The case could be made that it was all just banter between two adults getting to know one another. That is what Donald Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, was attempting to do in cross-examining Stormy Daniels on Friday morning. She set the scene:

There was Stormy Daniels in Donald Trump’s hotel room, taking a moment to use the bathroom to freshen up. When Daniels comes out of the bathroom, the lawyer states, she was a woman who “acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies, right?”

“Right,” answered Stormy Daniels.

“And there are naked men and naked women having sex in those movies?”

“Correct.”

“But according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed in a T-shirt and boxers was so upsetting, you became light-headed and almost fainted?”

“Yes,” answered Daniels. “When you’re not expecting a man twice your age, yes.”

She didn’t have to spell it out for the lawyer, or the judge, or the press and public attending the trial. It was the moment she knew that all the banter about The Apprentice and whether there were unions in the pornographic film business, all of it had been leading up to the moment when she realized that Trump intended to have sex with her whether she wanted to or not.

Everyone could fill in the blanks. You don’t sit on a bed in your underwear waiting for a woman, any woman, to come out of the bathroom unless you assume that she is going to have sex with you. Not want to have sex with you. Not agree to have sex with you. Because you want to have sex with her.

Trump’s lawyer put it quite inartfully: because this was a woman who has acted in more than 200 pornographic movies with “naked men and naked women having sex,” the reasonable assumption by her client was that the woman would now have sex with him because he was Donald Trump.

See, there’s the gap in this whole thing – the yawning chasm that exists not just between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels, but between Donald Trump and every woman in the world. Trump thought he could push E. Jean Carroll up against the wall in a dressing room and sexually assault her. He thought he could grope a woman who just happened to be sitting next to him on a flight across the country. He thought he could do the same thing to a woman sitting next to him in a restaurant. According to women who came forward to tell their stories in 2016, he sexually harassed and assaulted more than 25 women over the previous 30 years.

He's been doing it all his life, exploiting the gap between his privilege and everyone he comes in contact with, but especially women. What was it he said to interviewer Billy Bush on the famous Access Hollywood tapes? “So just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Those are the unspoken words at the Trump trial on Friday -- unspoken by Trump’s attorney as she did her cross-examination. The words were not spoken when Stormy Daniels answered questions. And of course, those words were not spoken by Donald Trump as he sat at the defense table, and they will remain unspoken throughout the rest of the trial until the jury is dismissed to begin its deliberations. Trump knows what happened between himself and Stormy Daniels in a Lake Tahoe hotel room 18 years ago because he knows what has happened between himself and women for his entire life.

You can do anything.

He stripped down to his boxer shorts and t-shirt while she was in the bathroom because “you can do anything.” He had sex with her because “you can do anything.” He paid her off and bought her silence in the final days before the 2016 presidential election because “you can do anything.” He falsified his New York state financial reports to conceal that pay off because “you can do anything.”

So-called consensual sex between adults is not a crime, but every functioning brain cell in every human brain in that courtroom on Friday, including Trump’s female attorney, knew the truth. Donald Trump’s crime is his assumption that he can do anything and get away with it because he is Donald Trump.

Trump’s lawyer seemed to think that because Daniels was “acting” in pornographic films, that the sex wasn’t real. “So, you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex seem real,” the lawyer asked her, clearly not expecting the answer she got from Daniels: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room.”

In fact, in the motion picture business, everything that happens on screen is fake – the laughter, the tears, the blanks fired by guns, the car wrecks – everything, that is, except the sex in pornographic films, because the sex act in porn can’t be faked. The sex act is what porn is about. It’s what viewers pay for.

Donald Trump didn’t think about any of this because Donald Trump assumes that he can do anything he wants. Now in a Manhattan courtroom, he is being made to sit in a chair and listen to what he did. The crime he is charged with isn’t the sex, it’s the pay-off, in a kind of backhanded bookkeeping way. But quintessentially, Trump’s crime is his attitude. He is on trial for being Donald Trump and acting like Donald Trump has always acted, and it’s driving him crazy.

Thank you, Stormy Daniels. Thank you.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter , from which this is reprinted with permission.

Jury Orders Trump To Pay $83 Million In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Donald Trump will have to pay journalist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in total damages in her defamation case, after nine jurors – seven men and two women – deliberated for just under three hours in a lower Manhattan federal courthouse Friday afternoon.

This is the second civil defamation and sexual abuse case Carroll brought against the ex-president, who is facing 91 state and federal criminal felony charges. Hen is also facing a civil business fraud case in New York, which has the potential to cost him hundreds of millions and bar him from doing business in the Empire State.

E. Jean Carroll’s case surrounded defamatory statements Trump made in June of 2019, and jurors were required to determine compensatory and punitive damages Trump owes for those statements. In the first case a jury determined Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The judge in both cases, senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan determined those facts would hold over for this case. He also had noted after the first case that Trump had effectively been found liable for rape, making the ex-president an adjudicated rapist.

Initially Carroll’s attorney asked for $10 million in compensatory damages in the current case, but expert testimony revealed it would cost the journalist, author, and advice columnist at least $12 million to repair her damaged reputation, and millions more in lost wages and other injuries.

Just Security last week described that as, “economic loss (lost income, career opportunities, or business deals due to damaged reputation) as well as for emotional distress (mental anguish, humiliation, and reputational harm).”

Carroll’s attorneys on Friday asked the jury for $24 million in compensatory damages. During closing arguments Carroll’s attorneys told the jury Trump’s claims of high net worth should be taken in to account when deciding how much to award Carroll in punitive damages.

Throughout the trial, and as recently as 11:30 AM Friday, Donald Trump continued his attacks, calling the trial the “E. Jean Carroll False Accusation Case,” and falsely claiming, “This is another Biden Demanded Witch Hunt against his Political Opponent, funded and managed by Radical Left Democrats. The Courts are totally stacked against me, have never been used against a Political Opponent, like this.”

The jury was required to answer these three “yes” or “no” questions:

“Did Ms. Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Ms. Carroll suffered more than nominal damages as a result of Mr. Trump’s publication of the June 21 and June 22, 2019 statements?”

“In making the June 21, 2019 statement, Mr. Trump acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, or spite, vindictively, or in wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s rights?”

“In making the June 22, 2019 statement, Mr. Trump acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, or spite, vindictively, or in wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s rights?”

During the final day of trial, Donald Trump stormed out of the courtroom when he was criticized by Carroll’s attorney, the highly-respected Roberta Kaplan. Judge Kaplan (no relation) announced that would become part of the trial record.

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, repeatedly ignored Judge Kaplan’s directions to not question the facts of the case, that Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, yet she repeatedly ignored his warnings.

Judge Kaplan was forced repeatedly to warn and rebuke Habba, and at one point during closing arguments, he threatened Habba with jail if she continued.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

E. Jean Carroll Has Trump By The Wallet (But Is There Anything In It?)

The $83.3 million defamation judgment that writer E. Jean Carroll won Friday against Donald Trump will soon reveal the depth of his finances, long shrouded in smoke and mirrors, disclaimers that his financial statements are not to be trusted, and outright fabrications about his income and wealth.

The secret: does Trump have the money to pay Carroll?

Trump says he’ll appeal. He has few grounds to challenge the federal court judgment. But if Trump does appeal, it will open the curtain on his murky finances, where inflated valuations and concealed obligations are common.

Trump testified almost a year ago that he was sitting on $400 million of cash. Be skeptical. Don’t discount the prospect that Donald conflated his personal money with cash from his MAGA fundraising operations, which by law cannot be used to pay Carroll.

Appealing will require Trump to either deposit the entire judgment amount with the court or obtain a bond covering 20 percent of the judgment, close to $17 million.

If you were in the financial business, would you loan any money to Trump? What if he offered to pay a fat fee upfront? A high-interest rate? What real estate would you take as collateral to back the bond, knowing that if the appeal fails, Trump will fight to keep you from collecting?

As early as this week, Trump expects a Manhattan judge to impose a fine of more than $300 million for persistent financial fraud.

Naked Claim

Even if Trump had $400 million cash a year ago, an unverified claim, he has faced enormous legal and other bills since then. At the same time, his golf courses in Ireland and Scotland continued losing money, public records in London show.

The Carroll case and the expected New York State civil judgment for persistent fraud would consume 96 percent of the cash he claimed without proof.

Suppose Trump can’t financially qualify to pursue an appeal. In that case, Carroll can enforce judgment, seizing cash in bank accounts and putting liens on properties such as the portion of Trump Tower that Trump still owns and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. That would take time and cost Trump a small fortune in legal fees—he has a history of stiffing his lawyers—to delay paying Carroll. Meanwhile, interest costs will add to the $83.3 million obligation.

Trump hopes that an appeals court will find the damages award excessive. Death cases, after all, are often settled for a few million dollars, sometimes a few hundred thousand.

He is unlikely to prevail because the jury awarded $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages. As a rule, courts respect punitive awards of less than six times actual damages. This punitive award was about 3.6 times the compensatory damages.

The punitive damages are intended, as Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan told the federal court jury, to get Trump to stop lying about Carroll. After an earlier trial Trump was judged to have raped Carroll in a Bergdorf-Goodman department store dressing room and to have lied about it in repeated attacks on Carroll. More than two dozen other women have accused Trump of rape or sexual assault.

Trump insists he never met Carroll and “she’s not my type.” During a pretrial deposition he was shown a photo of himself and his first wife facing E. Jean Carroll and her then husband. Trump misidentified Carroll as his second wife, Marla Maples. When his lawyer interrupted to repair the damage Trump asserted that the sharply focused image was blurry.

Knowing Trump, I doubt he will stop attacking Carroll. His emotional state and views about women, frozen in puberty, and his declining mental health and cognitive capacity will not facilitate a proper change in conduct.

Fantasy Finances

Trump’s finances have always been exercises in fantasy. For example, in 1985, he bought Mar-a-Lago for $10 million. He claimed it was a cash purchase with no mortgage. I have in my home a Chase bank executive’s letter to Trump promising never to file the Mar-a-Lago mortgage at a courthouse, as banking laws require.

One reality is that Trump borrowed 125 percent of the purchase price, taking $2 million for himself while claiming he paid from his supposed rich cash deposits. A second is that bankers who declare their illegal conduct rarely get prosecuted or even disciplined, so weak is government regulation of finance in America.

The same year he bought Mar-a-Lago with the hidden mortgage, Trump also acquired the nearly finished Hilton Casino in Atlantic City. He paid with a $325 million loan, from which he shaved off a $5 million fee for himself.

Eventually, he owned three Atlantic City casinos, yet he never invested a dime in that New Jersey resort town. It was all borrowed money. Because he took fees for himself from the loan proceeds, his investment was less than zero, just as with Mar-a-Lago.

Only a foolhardy or corrupt banker would issue Trump a bond enabling his appeal of the $83.3 million award to E. Jean Carroll. If Trump fails to meet the financial qualifications for an appeal, there’s one thing we’ll know for sure: the man who ran for president claiming he was worth more than $10 billion is so financially weak that when an 80-year-old woman grabbed him by the wallet, he couldn’t perform.

Reprinted with permission from DC Report.

Let Us Now Celebrate E. Jean Carroll, The Woman Who Exposed Trump

Can you believe the courage of this woman? E. Jean Carroll has received so many death threats that she began deleting them from her email account. She has been a daily recipient of Donald Trump’s lies and invective not just for days, but for years. Every day during her first trial, which she won when the judge found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her, and during her current trial, for Trump having defamed her, she has endured reliving the experience of being raped by Donald Trump and defamed for having told the truth about it, and she has not given up.

Can you believe the cowardice of this man? He knows that he raped her. He knows that he lied when he said it never happened. He knows that he has met her and lied when he denied it. There is photographic evidence that he met her. He knows he lied when he said in a deposition that “she is not my type.” He mistook her in the photograph for his second wife, Marla Maples, the mother of one of his children, and for a number of years, very definitely his “type.”

Can you believe that he thinks continuing to defame E. Jean Carroll and showing his disgust with her and with the trial proceedings is a good strategy in his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency? Even if we accept the death grip he has on what we call the MAGA base of Republican voters, his attitude about facing justice in court and E. Jean Carroll herself worked against him in New Hampshire. He carried male Republican voters by 20 points, but he carried female Republicans by only 4 points. Women know what sexual assault and rape are. According to the CDC, over half of women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes, and one in four women have experienced attempted or completed rape.

More than 50 percent of voters are women. That means at least a quarter of all the voters who will walk into a polling place in November of this year and cast a vote will have personal knowledge of the sexual violence Donald Trump committed on E. Jean Carroll.

I don’t know how Donald Trump squares that political reality with the way he has treated E. Jean Carroll ever since she revealed to the world that he raped her in a department store dressing room. The fact is, he doesn’t square it. His political instincts, which have been shown to be pretty effective when it comes to motivating a certain group of people to turn out and vote for him, are failing when it comes to a single woman who has stood up and told the truth to the world about his proclivity for sexual violence.

We have known before about what he has done to women. In 2016, the Access Hollywood tape exposed the fact that he is proud of his ability to sexually assault women and get away with it. E. Jean Carroll told her story about Trump raping her, and when he called her a liar, she shot back and sued him. She won a large money judgement against him, and she’s going to win another.

But the judgement that’s going to count will be the one he faces in November when women go to the polls and cast their votes in the presidential election. He has given them plenty of reasons to vote against him, most recently taking sole credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That took away women’s rights to control their reproductive health.

E. Jean Carroll’s case proves that Donald Trump does not believe women have a right to walk into a store and go shopping safely. Donald Trump thinks that women should submit to random men who want to commit sexual violence against them. E. Jean Carroll took Donald Trump to court to prove that he is wrong.

There are many E. Jean Carrolls out there. In continuing to tell lies about her, in showing his contempt for her and for the legal process of the lawsuit against him, Donald Trump is going to discover that the price he will pay will not only be financial, it will be political. There is not enough thanks in the world to reward E. Jean Carroll for doing what she has done to Donald Trump. She has shown him to be the coward that he is.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter , from which this is reprinted with permission.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Thank You, Stormy Daniels -- For Letting Us See Trump Being Trump

Jury Orders Trump To Pay $83 Million In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

E. Jean Carroll Has Trump By The Wallet (But Is There Anything In It?)

Naked Claim

Fantasy Finances

Let Us Now Celebrate E. Jean Carroll, The Woman Who Exposed Trump

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