E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump and United States of America (poll added!)

[Kendra]

Former President Trump and E. Jean Carroll must say in writing whether they intend to be present throughout the trial beginning later this month — and if so, on what date and times.

They have until April 20 to do so.

[Kendra]

Federal udge says Trump's rhetoric toward judges/jurors in other cases (including recent Bragg criminal case) justifies anonymity for jurors in the upcoming E. Jean Carroll civil trial.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .105.0.pdf

[Volkonski]

Of course.

[Kendra]

[Volkonski]

The Trump Team’s Startling Questions for E. Jean Carroll Jurors

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-trump ... etter%20AM

Are you on Truth Social? What cable news network do you watch? Have you ever used the hashtag #BelieveAllWomen when discussing sexual assault?

With just weeks to go before E. Jean Carroll’s rape trial against Donald Trump in New York, lawyers on both sides are figuring out what questions to ask prospective jurors. And while some questions are the run-of-the-mill kind used to screen biased jurors, a fair share highlight the bizarre nature of the case involving the country’s most divisive politician.

The federal trial is set to begin April 25 in Lower Manhattan, where the magazine columnist seeks to prove that the former president raped her in a changing room inside the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s. Due to Trump’s delay games and refusal to test his DNA against the black coat dress she wore that day—which has been tested at a crime lab—jurors will mostly have to decide on competing recollections of what happened that day.

As such, the stakes are high for weeding out MAGA types and Trump haters. And the questions they plan to ask at jury selection indicate as much, half a dozen legal scholars told The Daily Beast.

One of Trump’s proposed questions stands out: “Do you think that the #metoo movement has gone too far?”

“He’s trying to poison the well a little bit and plant seeds in the jurors' minds. He’s warming them up before he even talks to them,” noted Aviva Orenstein, a law school professor at Indiana University Bloomington.

However, Orenstein noted that unlike New York state courts, judges in federal court normally screen jurors with lawyers’ suggested questions—and no self-respecting judge would ask a leading question like that.

“I’d ask, ‘What is your opinion of #metoo?’” she said.

Both sides’ proposed lists include several questions on a person’s feelings about alleged sexual assault, and scoring open-minded jurors who haven’t already labeled Trump a scumbag will be difficult. At trial, Carroll’s lawyers are hoping to convince jurors that Trump’s abundant history of misogynist comments paint the picture of a serial sexual predator protected by his entitlement and wealth.

In that sense, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has already tilted the trial in Carroll’s favor by allowing jurors—if they somehow haven’t already—to watch the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape where Trump infamously said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it… you can do anything… grab 'em by the pussy.”

Trump’s lawyers also want to engage in what several legal scholars noted was a blatant litmus test for people’s politics: dredging up the debacle that was the Senate’s contentious confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court pick in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh. After he underwent a surface-level FBI background check, it was journalists who documented Kavanaugh’s long history of alleged sexual misconduct—including one episode in high school, where a prep school student recalled him drunkenly pinning her down in a bed while covering up her mouth so she couldn’t scream.

At Carroll’s trial later this month, Trump’s lawyers want to ask: “Are you familiar with the allegations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before he was confirmed to the Court?”

Attorneys trying to assess people’s biases regularly draw from examples in movies and widely followed news stories—but this one carries a particular undertone that smacks of a MAGA loyalty test, noted Andrea D. Lyon, a longtime public defender who’s tried 138 cases in court.

“These are the kinds of questions you can’t get to ask. Judges won’t let you, because you’re bringing in a case that has nothing to do with a trial… there’s a huge backstory. And my guess is, it’s to identify people who just hate Trump, and also take a look and see if ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ people stick together,” said Lyon, a law professor at Indiana’s Valparaiso University.

[Dr. Ken]

Stall tactic

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

Let me guess: "I'm being investigated for raising money off of false accusations. She is making a false accusation too, so she should be investigated! "

[realist]

It' Soros. Anyone with half a brain knows it's Soros.

[Kendra]

UPDATE: Judge Lew Kaplan has denied Trump's request to move his trial date so he can take more discovery of E. Jean Carroll. But Trump was not denied all relief. 1/

So Kaplan is allowing Trump to take an extra one-hour deposition of Carroll before April 19 and limited to “the subject of Ms. Carroll’s knowledge of the financing assistance as of the date of her deposition and as of the present.” 3/

[chancery]

Excerpt from letter from Carroll's counsel:

The factual and procedural background relevant to this motion is straightforward (though
certainly not as Trump’s letter portrays them). At her deposition in Carroll I, counsel for Trump
asked the following questions and Carroll gave the following answers:

Q. Are you presently paying your counsel’s fees?
A. This is a contingency case.
Q. So you’re not paying expenses or anything out of pocket to date; is that
correct?
A. I’m not sure about expenses. I have to look that up.
Q. Is anyone else paying your legal fees, Ms. Carroll?
A. No.

Dep. Tr. at 209:11-21. Plaintiff’s counsel was not, in that deposition setting, able to object to that
line of questioning on relevance grounds, Fashion Exch. LLC v. Hybrid Promotions, LLC, 333
F.R.D. 302, 307 (S.D.N.Y. 2019), but did make an appropriate inquiry at the time to determine
that Carroll had testified truthfully given her then-existing knowledge.

Last week, during the course of preparing for her testimony at trial, Carroll recollected
additional information relating to the above exchange. Accordingly, we promptly disclosed to
Trump’s counsel that, while Carroll stands by her testimony about this being a contingency fee
case, she now recalls that her counsel at some point secured additional funding from a nonprofit
organization to cover certain expenses and fees.1 See Ex. A. Our letter explained that while the
funding was plainly irrelevant to Carroll’s claims, we were supplementing the record in an
abundance of caution. Id.

Since sending that letter, we have provided additional information to Trump’s counsel,
both by phone and letter. See Ex. B. We explained that Carroll has (and has always had) a
contingency fee arrangement with our firm, but that in September 2020—well after Carroll filed
her state court complaint in November 2019—financial support was obtained from a nonprofit to
help pay certain costs and fees in connection with the firm’s work on Carroll’s behalf. We informed
Trump’s counsel that Carroll has never met and has never been party to any communications
(written or oral) with anyone associated with the nonprofit. We disclosed to Trump’s lawyers the
name of the individual donor and the nonprofit organization from which the funds originated.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .109.0.pdf

The order granting very limited additional discovery is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .110.0.pdf

It's a memo endorsement on the second page of the document.

[Luke]

Thanks, Chancery.

Here's Alina Habba's letter, which includes a bundle of stuff including E. Jean Carroll’s Responses and Objections to Defendant’s First Set of Interrogatories from 2022. It includes information about financial harm and other things that I imagine will come up at trial. Letter: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/ ... rMqhcWU/v0

Carroll states that, during her tenure as a Columnist at Elle Magazine, she was paid $5 a word, whereas at The Atlantic, where she worked as a Contributing Writer since August 2020, she was paid $.023 a word. As set forth in her Response to Trump’s Requests for Production, Carroll will produce certain documents concerning the economic injuries that the Statements caused her to suffer.

Carroll.JPG (47.82 KiB) Viewed 6506 times

T**** & Alina are miserable creeps, Jean is 79 years old. If Reid Hoffman paid something to Kaplan, so what? Jean says she didn't know the details and that makes sense. Alina is determined to make things as ugly and nasty as possible. It's like how they tried for a trial delay to let things "calm down" when it's T**** who went nuts and threatened violence and destruction or whatever the hell he said. Alina's already been sanctioned almost $1M in connection with her outrageous conduct on the bogus Clinton case. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/1 ... n-00078700 Who's paying that?

And after that whopping sanction, Alina was "stepping down" from the Jean Carroll case. That's when Joe Tacopina came onboard. They can't even keep their lies straight and it was Alina who has been pushing paper.

Alina Habba Steps Down As Top Trump Lawyer for Rape ...
Business Insider
Feb 1, 2023 — Alina Habba is withdrawing as Trump's lead attorney for E. Jean Carroll's rape claim. Last month, a federal judge sanctioned her $1 million ...
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-l ... ons-2023-2

I sincerely hope T**** & Alina go down in flames. How long before she's disbarred? They are still taking advantage of this lady.

[Luke]

Judge Slams Trump in Lengthy Warning While Denying Delay Request
Published on April 17, 2023 at 11:01 AM ET By David Badash

The judge in E. Jean Carroll‘s defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump blasted the ex-president in a lengthy ruling denying his request for another delay, warning he will not allow Trump to try to prejudice the jury pool then use that as reason for needing a “cooling off” period – and reminded him his situation during any delay could get worse. “It does not sit well for Mr. Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him and should be taken into account as supporting a further delay,” wrote U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ten-page denial. Trump’s lawyers, citing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charging Trump with 34 felony violations, asked for a four-week delay, claiming it would be hard for him to get a fair trial.

“At bottom, Mr. Trump has failed to show that there is anything about the media coverage of his indictment or about the supposed efficacy of a ‘cooling off’ period that would warrant an adjournment of this trial.” Judge Kaplan adds, “it is quite important to remember [also] that postponements in circumstances such as this are not necessarily unmixed blessings from the standpoint of a defendant who is hoping for the dissipation of what he regards, or says he regards, as negative publicity. Events happen during postponements. Sometimes they can make matters worse,” he says, appearing to suggest Trump might face additional indictments or other issues during his requested four-week delay. “There is no justification for an adjournment,” Judge Kaplan states, observing that the media coverage was “significantly (though certainly not entirely) invited or provoked by Mr. Trump’s own actions.” He also noted that any claim it “would preclude selection of a fair and impartial jury on April 25 is pure speculation.”

Judge Kaplan also says Carroll filed her case more than three years ago, and, “She now is over 79 years of age and is entitled to her day in court just as both parties are entitled to a fair trial.” The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery sums up Judge Kaplan’s denial and remarks, writing: “Judges all over the place are finally coming down on Trump with iron fists. The theme is usually the same: You caused your own hell, Mr. Trump.”

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.c ... y-request/

10 pages: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .114.0.pdf

[Azastan]

This is like the person who kills mom and dad, then wants the court to have mercy on him because he's now an orphan.

[Volkonski]

This is like the person who kills mom and dad, then wants the court to have mercy on him because he's now an orphan.

The very definition of "chutzpah".

[Ben-Prime]

This is like the person who kills mom and dad, then wants the court to have mercy on him because he's now an orphan.

The very definition of "chutzpah".

Or, as TFG and his lawyer, Joey Bag'O'Tacos, call it, "Day One of Trial Advocacy 101 at Trump University Law School."

I am sure they also teach it at the former ASSoL (Antonin Scalia School of Law, now the Antonin Scalia Law School when they realized how unfortunate the original name and acronym were), but that may just be my hatred of Scalia outlasting his death.

[Kendra]

New —

@EJeanCarroll
's attorney
@KaplanRobbie
confirms that her client will be there throughout the trial against former President Trump.

Now, we wait to see if Trump will attend.

[raison de arizona]

NEW: The judge in the E. Jean Carroll suit is getting increasingly frustrated with Joe Tacopina. In responding to Tacopina's request for "clarification" of jury selection procedures, he issued a short order that is the epitome of a bench slap, as @DavidLat used to say. 1/

It begins, "I take what I understand to be material inaccuracies in Mr. Tacopina's letter to be misunderstandings attributable to the fact that Mr. Tacopina was not present at the meeting attended by [court personnel and other lawyers.]" 2/

He continues, "The Court nevertheless provides the following information concerning the proceedings on Tuesday" and goes on to detail a jury selection process that mimics what the court did in the height of COVID. 3/

Tacopina keeps getting himself in what my dad used to call "deep Bandini" with the court, and although Judge Kaplan won't be the factfinder here, trial lawyers sometimes forget how much jurors identify with the judge--and pick up on tension with/disapproval of counsel. 4/

A good judge -- and SDNY's Lew Kaplan is an excellent one -- works to treat counsel and parties fairly. But Tacopina and his client each have tried Kaplan's p atience in ways that likely will bleed into the trial and could impact jurors' perceptions. Watch this space. FIN

https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/16 ... 91527?s=20

[humblescribe]

"Bandini is the word for fertilizer."

I remember that tag line oh so well!

https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f9973a ... 04985ad158

[RVInit]

There is no way Trump will attend that trial. He can't sit for five minutes unless the entire event consists of one after another person getting up to lavish praise on him. I don't think they will allow Ivanka to come in and walk around the room clapping her hands together to lead the entire courtroom in hours of praise fest. No, Trump won't be there.

[AndyinPA]

Ivanka no longer has that job.

[MN-Skeptic]

As the replies point out, Trump has absolutely no desire to be in the courtroom. He just doesn't want to be penalized by the jury for not attending.

[p0rtia]

Actually, Kyle, that is Joe Taco making it clear that TFG does NOT want to appear at the trial.

So worried about NY's resources; so ready to speak for the Secret Service. I'm old enough to remember that last time he did that, it turned out he was lying.

What a scuzzball.

[Dave from down under]

If he is worried about travelling and the disruption outside the court house.

I’m sure the court house has secure accommodation on site for the indicted.

[AndyinPA]

If he is worried about travelling and the disruption outside the court house.

I’m sure the court house has secure accommodation on site for the indicted.

You sure you don't mean "indicated"?

[Slim Cognito]

I have to watch myself these days. I got such a kick out of "indicated" I find myself reading indicted that way no matter who got locked up. One of these days I'm going to say it out loud.