E. Jean Carroll adds Trump's CNN comments to defamation case
E. Jean Carroll asked a civil court to consider comments former President Donald Trump made on CNN's town hall in an ongoing defamation lawsuit that is separate from the one settled on May 9.
In a filing Monday, she asked the court to consider the comments he made the day after she was awarded $5 million in damages.
"The proposed amendment also adds allegations concerning the verdict in Carroll II and Trump's public response to that verdict, which involved repeating on CNN the statements that Carroll II jury found to be defamatory, allegations that we believe are now directly relevant to the issue of punitive damages on the defamation claim in Carroll I," the filing said.
The $5 million damages were awarded on May 9 – Trump's legal team has filed an appeal. Monday’s filing involved a separate defamation lawsuit , filed before the one decided on May 9. It involves separate comments, but it has been delayed by appeals and arguments.
On May 10, Trump went on CNN and against called her account “fake” and a “made-up story.”
The defamation cases related to Carroll's claim that the former president raped her decades ago, and his denials, made in 2019. There was an extensive legal battle because Trump claimed he was president at the time and thus couldn't be sued.
The Justice Department said in Sept. 2020, when Trump was still president, that he acted in his official capacity. The Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals refused to get involved, remanding the case go back to Judge Kaplan to rule on the defamation.
That case now returns to Judge Kaplan, the same judge who presided over the May 9 decision.
"We are quite confident that will be affirmed, and then we'll be able to move forward with damages in that case. We don't even need a finding of liability because we already have it," Carroll's lawyer Robbie Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, explained to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.
She explained that this case is the first instance of defamation, and the most recent verdict related to a second time that Trump defamed Carroll. For that reason, Robbie Kaplan thinks that the first case will yield a much higher dollar amount in damages because it was the first time Trump attacked Carroll. It was also the case in which Carroll linked the impact to her career and business.
Kaplan also explained to Maddow that she was working with other legal scholars to decide whether Trump could be sued a third time for breaking the defamation laws for what he said during the CNN Town Hall. She explained that there isn't a lot of case law around people continuously defaming the same person over and over again. Typically they stop after losing a lawsuit, she told Maddow.
Read More Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/nyregion/jean-carroll-sues-trump.htmlFormer White House lawyer predicts Donald Trump is going to jail
Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal thinks that Donald Trump is going to jail – and his thoughts are backed up by two of Trump's former lawyers.
Speaking to MSNBC's Katie Phang on Monday, Katyal addressed the recent revelations that Trump's lawyer Evan Corcoran kept about 50 pages of notes from the early days of the document scandal. Those notes are now exposing possible obstructions of justice when a subpoena for them was issued to the DOJ and FBI.
The documents piece of the DOJ probe is one that many legal experts believe has the potential to damage the former president.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr is among those who have said, "of the cases out there right now, the one I'd be most concerned about, if I were the president, is the Mar-a-Lago document case." He made the comments Thursday while speaking to CBS News' Catherine Herridge. Katyal agreed.
"I've thought for a long time this was the strongest potential criminal case against Donald Trump. And it gets stronger and stronger every day. It's always been clear and easy. And, you know, remember, we've always known that Trump had these highly sensitive documents long after he was subpoenaed. So, the current investigation is not as much about did he have the documents. They know Trump kept them. But [it's about] whether he knew he was doing something illegal when he kept them."
Katyal explained that it isn't unusual for a target to "play dumb" by saying things like, "I didn't know I was doing anything wrong." In the past, it's worked for Trump. But now, he said, things have changed.
"In this case, his own lawyers' notes show he needed to hand the documents over and that it looks like he was manipulating them, according to Hugo [Lowell's] phenomenal reporting. And if true, it makes the obstruction case, as you say, pretty easy," Katyal explained.
All of this points to the possibility that Trump could end up in jail, he said.
Phang asked about the piercing of attorney-client privilege, and Katyal explained that it's such a high threshold that "the judges have already determined it to be a crime."
The following steps, he said, are to uncover whether "it's Trump or someone else that the attorney-client privilege was pierced for, and I suspect there is one probably pretty answer to that question."
The comments from Katyal come on the heels of a piece by Aaron Blake in The Washington Post that cited Timothy Parlatore and Ty Cobb as two Trump lawyers that pointed to "the dissension and alienation that have plagued Trump’s legal effort for years."
Parlatore spoke out on CNN over the weekend, revealing a crisis among the Trump lawyers where they're effectively playing against each other rather than representing the client. He specifically cited long-time Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn as the source of a lot of problems.
Cobb took the comments a little further, saying Trump will "go to jail” for his role in the classified documents case. He also attacked the Trump legal team for their handling of the case.
"The real reason is that there are certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be,” Parlatore told CNN. "In particular, there is one individual who works for him, Boris Epshteyn, who had really done everything he could to try to block us — to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”
"And the many other misrepresentations that he and others have made on his behalf with regard to his possession of classified documents,” Cobb said, also appearing on CNN. "So, I think this is — I think this obstruction case is a tight case. And, yes, I do think he’ll go to jail on it."
Last month, Cobb went so far as to describe Smith's case as a "slam dunk."
Watch: Former Trump lawyer may be 'waving a red flag' that he wants to cooperate with DOJ: legal expert
During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance reacted to former Donald Trump lawyer Timothy Parlatore coming clean about why he recently quit and says there appears to be a "turf war" among members of the former president's legal team that does not bode well for their client.
Over the weekend, Paraltore admitted that he left over disagreements and legal infighting and pointed the finger at longtime Trump associate Boris Epshteyn for slapping aside legal strategies.
As the New York Times reported, "Parlatore described how Mr. Epshteyn had hindered him and other lawyers from getting information to Mr. Trump, leaving the former president’s legal team at a disadvantage in dealing with the Justice Department, which is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office and his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election."
Asked what is going on by "Morning Joe" regular Johnathan Lemire, Vance suggested a plea deal may be in the works.
"It's almost as though there's a turf war going on here among the lawyers," she began. "You know, often, when you see a lawyer leave a legal team that might signify that there's a plea deal in the works or that there's some legal reason behind the change. Here, it looks like a pure turf battle. But when Paraltore goes out and reveals this sort of information, it's almost as though he's pointing a finger at Boris Epshteyn and including him in the group of people involved in obstructing justice in this situation."
"We don't usually see lawyers come out and make statements like this after they leave a legal team," she later added. "You know, it's CYA, it's maybe waving a red flag at the Justice Department and saying he would like to come back and testify in a grand jury. I think that would make it the third time for him."
"You know, Trump's lawyers don't seem to believe that when people say 'everything Trump touches dies,' that it includes the lawyers," she quipped. "But clearly, it does. Because they've put themselves at risk in a number of different ways."
"And so, we see lawyers leave and have to worry about whether they're next," she elaborated. "I don't think I've ever seen a situation where so many lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, are all invoked as part of possible criminal activity."
Watch:
