Donald Trump has managed to garner himself an unprecedented amount of scandal and legal peril for a former United States president — especially one who’s so fresh off their term. But, when it comes to the one-term, twice-impeached former guy, it’s not difficult to notice that Trump has a way, a knack, if you will, of taking what is already a deep hole for himself, and single-handedly digging it into a dark, gaping, endless abyss.
Almost entirely because he was apparently never taught just to keep his mouth shut.
Recently, Trump learned that U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan is absolutely fed up with his cat-and-mouse games in the defamation case lodged against him by world-renowned advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll, who has accused the now-former president of raping her in the dressing room of a ritzy, upscale department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. Trump immediately denied these allegations, which broke during his presidency, and wasted no time in smearing and defaming his alleged victim, going so far as to publicly and verbally attack Carroll’s physical appearance and claim that the accusations are impossible because Carroll isn’t his “type.” Trump’s public smear campaign resulted in the now-ongoing defamation case against him, and Donald and his legal team have spent their defense doing little more than desperately trying to run out the clock or bury the case in a seemingly neverending series of delay tactics meant to stall the lawsuit and avoid the former president being questioned by Carroll’s team of attorneys. However, Judge Kaplan said enough is enough.
Last week, Kaplan handed down a brutal ruling that ordered Trump to sit for the deposition on October 19th.
Trump, of course, didn’t take well to this order, taking to his Truth Social platform where he called the lawsuit a “complete con job” and went on to fume, “It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”
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Notice that Trump chose to utilize the very same public insult that landed him in this lawsuit in the first place.
Now, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade has sat for an interview with Vice, where she gave Carroll’s team of attorneys some sage legal advice to make an amendment to their civil defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, to include his newest, nasty rant against his accuser — A rant that Trump made as an American citizen and cannot be pulled into his umbrella defense that he was acting in his capacity as a government employee. The same claim that happens to be the only defense Donald’s legal team has to ride on.
Vice’s Greg Walters notes in the headline of his bombshell new piece: Trump Just Blew Up His Rape Lawsuit Defense. In his second line, Walters writes, “That’s because the move appears to have blown a new hole in Trump’s best defense against the magazine columnist’s lawsuit…”
Walters points out that Donald Trump’s latest tirade was “a really bad idea,” explaining, “Trump’s lawyers have argued for months that he can’t be held personally responsible in the suit because his denial took place during his presidency, and therefore fell under his official duties as president. But by repeating his denial last week in an online tirade posted on his social media site, Truth Social, and blasted out in an emailed statement, Trump essentially re-upped the activity at the heart of the lawsuit—at a moment when he’s not the president anymore.”
In the interview, legal expert McQuade agreed with Walters’ assessment of the matter and took things a step further when she offered up some free advice to the Carroll legal team to bolster the advice columnist and alleged Trump victim’s case.
“She [Carroll] should amend her complaint to include an additional count based on the new statement,” McQuade suggested. “Because Trump is no longer president, this statement was most certainly not made in the scope of his federal employment.”
The infamous George Conway was apparently inclined to agree, writing on Twitter, “So a woman accuses you of rape. You make a bunch of statements accusing her of lying. She sues you for defamation. Your defense (such as it is) was that you were POTUS when you made the statements so you can’t be sued personally. You litigate that FOR YEARS. You still have a chance at winning that argument. Meanwhile, the judge orders you to be deposed anyway. YOU GET BIG MAD. SO WHAT DO YOU DO??”
You litigate that FOR YEARS. You still have a chance at winning that argument. Meanwhile, the judge orders you to be deposed anyway.
YOU GET BIG MAD.
SO WHAT DO YOU DO??
— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) October 13, 2022
“You issue a BRAND NEW statement REPEATING all the earlier defamatory statements, but since you’re no longer POTUS, you NO LONGER HAVE THAT DEFENSE you’ve been pushing for years that you made the statements while you were president!!! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!” Conway added.
You issue a BRAND NEW statement REPEATING all the
earlier defamatory statements, but since you’re no longer
POTUS, you NO
LONGER HAVE THAT DEFENSE you’ve been pushing for years that you made the statements while you were president!!!ABSOLUTELY
BRILLIANT!!— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) October 13, 2022
It never seems to fail that, in cases such as this, Trump manages to do almost all of the heavy lifting for us.
Read the full analysis and McQuade interview from Vice’s Greg Walters here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
