After a big victory in the Iowa caucus, former President Donald Trump is expected in court Tuesday to face another legal challenge: a trial to determine how much more he owes the writer E. Jean Carroll for denying that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and accusing her of lying about her claims.
Jury selection begins Tuesday morning at a federal court in Manhattan. Opening arguments could take place by afternoon in what is essentially a second penalty phase of a legal fight Carroll has already won.
In May, a different jury awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding that Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in spring 1996, then defamed her in 2022 by claiming she made it up after she revealed it publicly in a 2019 memoir. The jury said Carroll hadn’t proven that Trump raped her.
Gotti was acquitted twice before he was convicted and spent the remainder of his life in prison.
It wasn’t a comparison to Gotti except for a lamentation that the name has been used already. Though if it ends with Trump behind bars too, I can’t complain. I’d like to feel some of this turns out to be more than just an annoying inconvenience for him.