Donald Trump goes on trial today facing allegations of rape from author E. Jean Carroll, who has outlasted and persisted through every dirty trick, legal avenue, stall, quash attempt and everything else Trump has thrown at her just to get to the opening remarks in today's federal proceedings.
In a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, a jury will begin hearing E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that former President Donald J. Trump raped her more than two decades ago in a department store dressing room, in a proceeding that seeks to apply the accountability of the #MeToo era to a dominating political figure.
The trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, expected to last one to two weeks, stems from a lawsuit and will take place amid a barrage of legal action aimed at Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency and arguing that the suits and investigations are meant to drag him down.
Ms. Carroll, a former magazine columnist, said nothing publicly about the encounter for decades before publishing a memoir in 2019 that accused Mr. Trump of attacking her.
In the suit, Ms. Carroll, 79, says that one evening in the mid-1990s, she visited the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman, where she was a regular shopper. There, the suit says, she ran into Mr. Trump. The two had met at least once before, and they traveled in the same New York City circles, the suit says. He said he was shopping for a present for “a girl,” and he asked her to advise him. She says she eventually accompanied him to the lingerie department where, she contends, he maneuvered her into a dressing room and raped her.
Mr. Trump, 76, has denied that he raped Ms. Carroll, has accused her of lying and has attacked her repeatedly in public statements and on social media, both while in office and after leaving. In 2019, after she published her account, he called her allegation “totally false” and said he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.” Last October, he said again, in a post on Truth Social, that she was not telling the truth and that the case was a “complete con job.”
Ms. Carroll’s lawyers will ask the jury to find Mr. Trump liable for battery, and if he is found responsible, to award monetary damages.
On top of that, there's a storm on the horizon and it looks like a doozy.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday said she would announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and his allies would be charged with crimes related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Willis revealed the timetable in a letter to local law enforcement in which she asked them to be ready for “heightened security and preparedness” because she predicted her announcement “may provoke a significant public reaction.”
In the letters, Willis said she will announce possible criminal indictments between July 11 and Sept. 1, sending one of the strongest signals yet that she’s on the verge of trying to obtain an indictment against Trump and his supporters.
“Please accept this correspondence as notice to allow you sufficient time to prepare the Sheriff’s Office and coordinate with local, state and federal agencies to ensure that our law enforcement community is ready to protect the public,” Willis wrote to Fulton Sheriff Patrick Labat.
Similar letters were hand delivered to Darin Schierbaum, Atlanta’s chief of police, and Matthew Kallmyer, director of the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency.
“We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of those we are sworn to protect,” Willis wrote. “As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to prepare.”
Trump has called for mass demonstrations in response to overreach from prosecutors — triggering concerns about violent unrest not unlike the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he promoted.
investigation, which Willis launched more than two years ago, said the letters suggest that Willis will seek charges against the former president.
“It obviously seems to imply the case against Trump will be presented to a grand jury,” former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said. “I don’t think any of the other targets would raise that level of caution. I think that’s the obvious implication.”
Norm Eisen, a former ethics czar under President Barack Obama who co-authored a Brookings Institute report on the Fulton probe, agreed.
“While she does not have the former president’s name in her letter, the evidence and the applicable law in Georgia point to the substantial likelihood that Donald Trump and his principal co-conspirators will be included when she follows through on the plans she confirms in this letter,” Eisen said.
Granted, we'll have another 3-4 months before Fani Willis makes her indictment decisions in Georgia, and another 4 months after than before Trump faces Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, but the year keeps getting significantly worse for Trump on his legal battle, and I couldn't be happier.
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