George Stephanopoulos, ABC host of This Week, who formerly ran “bimbo” interference for confessed philanderer Bill Clinton during his 1992 run for President, deplatformed himself on X recently, presumably because ABC has agreed to give fifteen million dollars to President-Elect Donald Trump’s presidential library fund to settle a lawsuit filed because Stephanopoulos falsely claimed Trump raped E. Jean Carroll.
In 2019, two years into the #MeToo movement, Carroll claimed Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store dressing room roughly thirty years ago (she also accused CBS CEO Les Moonves of rape). Trump says he didn’t. Carroll sued Trump for defamation because he said he didn’t rape her. Incredibly, in May of 2023, Carroll won her case. But perhaps it’s not so incredible given that the case was pursued in New York, a state notorious for its harassment of Donald Trump. (See the 2023 zombie case Alvin Bragg, New York County District Attorney covering Manhattan, brought against Trump.)
Let’s review the twisted logic at work in the Carroll v Trump civil case, although I am not promising that I can make it make sense. In order for the defamation case to work, the fact of rape must be a priori established. This would have to be the case for Trump to have lied about it. How else could this be if it were only a matter of Trump denying he raped a woman? Wouldn’t most of men deny they had raped a woman whether they had or not? In fact, almost all men accused of rape deny it. In the end, the jury fell short of saying it was rape, instead saying it was sexual abuse, and found Trump liable for defamation, and awarded her five million dollars.
The judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, insisted sexual abuse meant rape, and dismissed Trump’s countersuit by asserting that Trump had raped Carroll “in common modern parlance” although not “in the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.” If you were thinking judges in New York work from the technical meaning of the penal law, you were mistaken.
Kaplan is a driven man. Trump was never found guilty of, or even charged with rape or sexual assault in a criminal case where the burden on the state would have been to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Here’s reasonable doubt: Carroll and her lawyers claim Trump’s DNA is on the dress she wore the night she said she was raped. But when Trump’s team offered a DNA sample, Judge Kaplan ruled, “There is no DNA evidence in this case, and none will be introduced at trial.” Why would he rule this way? Because Carroll changed her story about when the rape occurred when it was revealed that the Donna Karan dress she insists she was wearing that day (the one with an unidentified male’s DNA on it) wasn’t produced by Donna Karan until after Carroll initially claimed the sexual assault occurred, which was in 1994.
The logic of this case would be like me accusing you of stealing my car stereo speakers in 1995, and when you deny it, sue you for defamation, with the jury having to establish that you did in fact steal my stereo speakers and therefore my denial constitutes defamation. This even though I didn’t even own a car in 1995.
New York is Kafka World. This case and the hush money case are among the most bizarre cases I have ever seen. And we know why. Because Trump was the target.
freedom and reason 