Former President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump celebrate during the balloon drop in the Fiserv Forum on the last night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., on Thursday, July 18, 2024. Lara Trump appears at left. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Donald Trump and his team of defense attorneys have had a very busy summer and, of late, reaped the benefits of a legal hot streak born from the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and subsequent dismissal of one of his four criminal indictments. But there is a case coming up fast for the former president that has nary a thing to do with classified documents, subverting federal elections, or trying to waylay his sentencing for his 34-count felony conviction for covering up hush-money payments he made to a porn star before launching his 2016 presidential campaign.
By Aug. 14 — only two short weeks away — Donald Trump faces a deadline to file his appeal brief of his May 2023 conviction in the first of two defamation cases involving writer E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll sued Trump for the first time in 2020 over comments he made in June 2019 when he denied that he raped and sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump claimed then, and now, that he has never met Carroll and that she is merely out to collect a paycheck. Trump tried to have this first case dismissed but to no avail.
In a separate case, Carroll sued him for sexual abuse, rape and defamation for comments he posted on his social media platform Truth Social in October 2022. Carroll was able to sue for sexual abuse and rape after the passage of the New York Adult Survivors Act, which allowed her to seek damages against Trump despite the statute of limitations expiring.
In May 2023, a jury convicted Trump of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and he was ordered to pay her $5 million.
When jurors delivered that verdict, they rejected Carroll’s allegation that what happened in the dressing room constituted rape as New York Penal Law defines it but instead considered it sexual abuse. Just a day after that verdict, when Trump made more degrading remarks about her during a CNN town hall, Carroll moved to increase the amount of damages he owed her. Trump countersued, claiming it was Carroll who had defamed him by stating that he did rape her during her own television appearance.
When Trump moved for a new trial after this conviction by arguing the verdict proved he did not rape her, presiding Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan clarified: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
In January 2024 the second Carroll trial, which focused only on the defamatory remarks Trump made about her and exactly how much he owed her in damages, got underway. Trump tried numerous times to throw the proceedings off track or have them dismissed, invoking everything from protections afforded by presidential immunity to his mother-in-law’s funeral.
At this jury trial, Carroll sought at least $10 million in compensatory damages with punitive damages to be established later. The Manhattan jury ended up agreeing to award Carroll $83.3 million all told for his defamatory comments about her and the hugely negative impact it had on her life. Trump was often disruptive during the trial and combative and as Law&Crime reported, when he finally testified, he took the witness stand only for a few minutes and denied that he ever intended to hurt Carroll with his comments.
Rather, he said, he “just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly, the presidency.”
His testimony was short-lived because the judge narrowed the scope of what Trump could say after already being found liable for defaming her in the earlier case.
In March, Trump secured a staggering $91.63 million bond to cover what he owes Carroll plus interest. By posting the bond, he could delay paying her as he sought an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Notably, Kaplan denied Trump’s request for a new trial in April, saying actual malice in Trump’s remarks was palpable. Trump’s “hatred and disdain was on full display” the judge wrote, noting that Trump had used the “loudest ‘bully pulpit’ in America and possibly the world” to attack Carroll while he was president and after.
Trump was ordered to move ahead with his appeal in May and as Law&Crime reported, in the months since that verdict, Trump has all but dared Carroll to sue him for a third time. He has taunted her online and in the press and repeatedly called her account of his attack on her “fictional” and a “fake story, totally made-up story” while continually denying that he ever met her.
All of this will be available for Carroll to seize on at oral arguments that were officially set this week for Sept. 6 — just two months before the 2024 presidential election.
Given his packed campaign schedule, ongoing legal battles and history of attempts to delay, it would surprise no one if Trump tries to postpone the oral arguments before they arrive in September.
Carroll, however, appears on the edge of her seat.
“I AM READY!!!” she wrote on X.com after oral arguments were scheduled.
Law&Crime takes a look at this and other key developments in Trump’s cases in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
NEW YORK
CRIMINAL
An appellate court has declined to loosen a gag order placed on Trump in his hush-money and election interference case. Trump still cannot attack acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan‘s daughter or the staff working at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s office before he is sentenced. But Trump can criticize witnesses and jurors.
Trump’s sentencing date for his 34-count felony conviction is still on the calendar for Sept. 18.
His lawyers also filed a sizable reply brief this week in support of an earlier motion to dismiss his guilty verdicts based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
CIVIL
A federal appeals court has scheduled oral arguments for Sept. 6 for Trump’s appeal of his May 2023 conviction in the first defamation case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse in the first case and a jury awarded Carroll $5.5 million in damages. Those funds have sat in a trust account untouched by Carroll since 2023 as the matter is appealed.
The writer apparently doesn’t want to waste any more time, exclaiming on X.com “I AM READY!!!” after the schedule was set.
Trump has until Aug. 14 to file his appellate brief.
In case you forgot: in January, Trump was ordered to pay a massive bond after he lost his second defamation case involving Carroll and filed an appeal of that verdict as well.
Left: Attorney Roberta Kaplan leaves federal court in New York during the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault case against Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews); Right: Former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik).
GEORGIA
CRIMINAL
The criminal case alleging Trump engaged in a scheme to reverse the election results in Georgia along with 18 others is on an indefinite pause while the motion to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis sits with the appeals court. Oral arguments on the appeal are not scheduled until Oct. 4.
OF NOTE: Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s co-defendant in the racketeering case, has finally agreed to end his doomed bankruptcy case after a judge threatened to put him in the witness box.
Rudy Giuliani talks to reporters before the Republican National Convention, on July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya).
FLORIDA
CRIMINAL
In the time since U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon controversially dismissed Trump’s classified documents indictment on the basis that special counsel Jack Smith was appointed unlawfully, there’s been little new to report. Expect that to change as the summer winds down: the deadline for Smith to file his opening brief to unwind Cannon’s ruling at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is Aug. 27.
OF NOTE: In the Sunshine State, new details were revealed about a case involving a local man who threatened to kill Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance just days after the assassination attempt on the 45th president.
Inset: Michael Wiseman (Palm Beach County Jail). Background: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File).
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUPREME COURT
Mark Meadows, Trump’s criminal co-defendant in the currently stalled Georgia indictment, would like a word with the Supreme Court and if he gets his way, another wrench could be thrown into an already beleaguered case. Meadows filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on Tuesday and asked the justices to move the case to federal court while invoking the court’s presidential immunity ruling on July 1 as grounds to grant the request.
CRIMINAL
Thursday officially marked one year since Donald Trump was indicted for allegedly conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election and intimidate voters.
It’s official: The Jan. 6 case is now back in the court of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. It is expected she will hold hearings to determine which allegations in the indictment must stay or go based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
CIVIL
Lawmakers and police suing Trump in civil court for damages they say they incurred as a result of his conduct on Jan. 6, filed a status report this week in conjunction with Trump’s lawyers. The parties are duking it out over discovery but all seem to agree that the production deadline of Sept. 11 can be met.
OF NOTE: Trump broke with personal hero, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, after he proposed a year in jail for people who burn the American flag. “Now, people will say ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that,” Trump ranted to Fox & Friends. In 2012, however, Scalia said if he were king, he wouldn’t allow people to burn it either but the First Amendment would forbid that and free speech is the “the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.” Meanwhile, years later, the Justice Department inspector general released a report explaining just how close Trump came to invoking the Insurrection Act during racial justice protests at Lafayette Park in June 2020.
In this June 1, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump walks in Lafayette Park to visit outside St. John’s Church across from the White House in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky).
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