On Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that former president Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, his former CFO and his adult sons have to pay more than $350 million in penalties. Engoron also barred the former president “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.” The ruling, though likely to be appealed, marks another defeat for Trump in a civil case. And those losses are powerful predictors of what’s likely coming once his criminal trials commence.
Trump fights every battle, large and small, in the court of public opinion. That court has no rules of engagement, no rules of evidence and no rules of procedure. There are no attorneys to object and no judges to tell Trump to sit down and cease disrupting the proceedings. There are no constitutional constraints. So, during his campaign rallies, his hallway outbursts outside courtrooms and his interviews with media outlets, Trump can lie, largely with impunity.
When the rules of evidence and procedure apply to legal contests, Trump loses.
But when his legal disputes move into courts of law, he loses. When the rules of evidence and procedure apply to legal contests, Trump loses.
Let’s briefly recap his last three civil trials. As is his right in a civil case, Donald Trump opted not to attend the first trial, regarding E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. His attorney in that case, Joe Tacopina, was bound by the rules of evidence and procedure, and Trump lost. Though in public he claimed — and still claims — he never met Carroll, the jury ruled unanimously that he had sexually abused and defamed her, and awarded Carroll $5 million.
In the second trial involving Carroll, which solely concerned her claim that Trump defamed her, the former president decided to attend, at least sporadically. Yet events turned out even worse for him. The jury saw him mumble under…
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