Traditionally, after a presidential candidate wins the Iowa caucuses, he or she heads to New Hampshire, hoping to parlay one victory into another. And while Donald Trump did, in fact, headline an event in the Granite State the day after his success in Iowa, as NBC News reported, he made one other notable stop in between.
Former President Donald Trump attended his defamation damages trial in New York on Tuesday, sitting roughly 10 feet away from E. Jean Carroll, the writer whom a civil jury last year said he was responsible for sexually abusing in the 1990s. Trump was in the courtroom for jury selection but left before opening statements began to go to a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
The Republican was not, for example, in the room when Carroll attorney Shawn Crowley told the newly seated jurors that Trump upended the plaintiff’s life and that they needed to return a verdict large enough to “make him stop” targeting her.
The former president “didn’t just deny the assault … he went much, much further,” Crowley added as the proceedings got underway. “He said he had no idea who she was. He accused her of lying and making up a story to make money and to advance some political conspiracy against him. And he threatened her. He said she should pay dearly for speaking out against him.”
Readers will be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. After all, as regular readers know, it was last year when the writer won a civil case against the former president: A jury found the Republican liable for sexually abusing Carroll, and jurors awarded the writer $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.
The jury did not find the defendant liable for rape, though a judge later concluded that the former president, for all intents and purposes, “‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
This was not, however, the final word on the subject. Trump is facing a second defamation trial, stemming from comments he made about…
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