Wednesday, March 27, 2024

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Judge Lewis Kaplan had ordered Trump not to speak about Carroll’s past relationships, sexual experiences or orientation and he could not debate about whether sexually abused or raped her. "These prohibitions hinged on the fact that he had already been found liable for defamation," Law&Crime's report stated. 
Kaplan went on to say that “the jury heard with their own ears and saw with their own eyes exactly how Trump has continued to defame Carroll since the Carroll II verdict and his mid-trial promise to defame her ‘a thousand times.'” 
And the jury watched Trump carry out this promise in real time, treating the courtroom like a campaign event,” Carroll's lawyer wrote. 
“Given this pattern of behavior, Carroll understandably had serious concerns that Trump would continue in his attempts to cast into doubt whether he sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, and would do so in front of the jury. 
"That danger seemed particularly acute if Trump himself elected to testify — since the Carroll II verdict, Trump had repeated his defamatory statements about Carroll in multiple forums and included references to topics that this Court had ruled inadmissible in the upcoming trial. 
"And during this intervening period, Trump had also testified in a different lawsuit, where he repeatedly defied the judge’s orders in that case,” Kaplan wrote.
Much of this is in the court record, which other judges can easily take notice of. Meaning Trump’s campaign attitude toward the courts is not going unnoticed, and can even be part of the basis for subsequent orders in unrelated courts. This stuff is deep minutiae that will never get to the jury or matter to the electorate. But the pattern is damning. And it is damning because Trump is doing it to judges. Trump thinks (I use the term loosely) that because the judge can’t gag him, he’s winning. But judges decide criminal sentences; and they can remember what an ass Trump was, and sentence accordingly. And they can act cumulatively. The more Trump gathers convictions and insults the integrity of judges, the more their sentences reflect his actions and justify the sentences; especially when it comes to the question of jail now, or later.

Trump winds up in jail, sooner or later. And he’ll have definitively put himself there.

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