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Still under the weather so I won’t post as much today. But had to post this.

Via Inner City Press: 1/…🧵

Judge Kaplan: So let me say, during the arguments and instructions, no one else is to speak...
Carroll's lawyer: We have an issue with some of the tweets, they were not entered into evidence.
Madaio: These are tweets during the five hour gap. They are objecting.
Judge Kaplan: You did not succeed in entering them. Show me the slide

[Me: wait for it…]

2/ Press:

Judge Kaplan: You are not showing the slide.
Habba: Your Honor, Ms. Kaplan stipulated -
🔥🔥Judge Kaplan: Sit down. You are on the verge of spending some time in the lock up.
(Habba appears to laugh)
Judge Kaplan: Bring in the jury

3/ Judge previously said this, too:

Judge Kaplan: "No one in the courtroom is to say anything except for opposing counsel...there are to be no interruptions by anybody else. No audible comments by anybody else."

4/ NOTE: I won’t reply to you today, for the most part. Not up to par. I’ll post when I feel up to it. Thanks ahead of time for all your replies.

Laffy

5/ Roberta Kaplan: Donald Trump's testimony yesterday was brief because he doesn't get a do-over
Trump's lawyer Madaio: Objection!
Judge Kaplan: Overruled.
Roberta Kaplan: This is about how to compensate Ms. Carroll for the two statements- & punishing Donald Trump.

This trial is about getting him to stop once and for all. It's also about whether the rules apply to all, including to Donald Trump. Think of his attitude to this proceeding - he says, She was asking for it

6/ Tantrump! Trump just “stormed out of court” (NBC)

Roberta Kaplan: He claims he had no choice but to break the law & defame her. She was a beloved advice columnist. Then a wave on soc med, echoing what Donald Trump says. … "pay dearly" & "dangerous territory."

Donald Trump has tried to normalize this conduct. Normally, when people lose in court, they court, they change their behavior.
👉🏼👉🏼[Trump leaves]
👉🏼👉🏼Judge Kaplan: The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and left the courtroom

7/ R Kaplan: Ms. Carroll's friend Carol Martin said she just wanted her day in court. Now she has it.

👉🏼👉🏼Judge Kaplan: We're going to change gears. The defense is to remain seated. That includes you, Mr. Epshteyn, not that you're part of the defense🔥

R Kaplan: Ms. Carroll's success as an advice columnist obviously relied on her audience's trust. She built it over decades. She had one truth too painful to share - in the Spring of 1996 Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. She tried to suppress it

8/ Roberta Kaplan: Her 274 page book contained nine pages about Donald Trump. New York Magazine published that. Donald Trump then told lie after lie after lie, to destroy her. Put up Slide 4
[Press: It is entitled, Defamatory Statement:
disgrace... never met this person]
7:07 AM · Jan 26, 2024
·

9/ RK Donald Trump was lying and trying to destroy Ms. Carroll. On the White House lawn he repeated it, claiming that he didn't know her. He threatened her - People have to be careful, because they're playing with very dangerous territory

He said, She is not my type. This was designed to humiliate Ms. Carroll. But remember, he mistook Ms. Carroll for Marla Maples, his ex-wife, also a beauty queen. Show the video
[on video: Trump: "that's John Johnson... And that's Marla...]

10/ Roberta Kaplan: Then he claimed the photo was blurry. It is not. This was classic Donald Trump.

Now, the damages. Obviously Ms. Carroll suffered harm... She now has only 1800 paying customers on Substack. Professor Humphreys gave you the estimates of harm

11/ Roberta Kaplan: Prof Humphreys estimates between 7 and 12 million dollars to repair reputation - smaller than other programs, as she explained.
Madaio: Objection. It's not in the record.
Roberta Kaplan: It is.
Judge Kaplan: The defense asked about other programs
Roberta Kaplan: She told you about the case of Rudi Giuliani and the Georgia elections workers -
Madaio: Objection!
Judge Kaplan: It's up to the jury.

12/ Klasfeld clarifies:

Carroll's team uses Rudy Giuliani's defamation of Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman as a guide for what's necessary for reputational repair.

They want Trump to pay between $7 to $12.1 million for this category alone.

13/ Press:

Roberta Kaplan: Imagine being Ms Carroll in that hotel room on 10th Avenue, struck by fear and sadness - the man who attacked her was coming after her again. She wanted to close the curtain. So she hung up jump suit - she was unable to sleep

14/ Roberta Kaplan: There were more threats waiting for her every time she answered her phone. She tweeted, the world needs love - the responses were, "you are a c*nt" and "no way Trump touched this mess," etc. Since 2019 they have never stopped

15/ Roberta Kaplan: 👉🏼The dollar number to compensate her has to be very large. At least as much as $12 million for the reputational repair campaign, and probably more. And how much will it take to get Donald Trump to stop? Punitive damages are to punish the malicious

16/ Roberta Kaplan: Consider what Donald Trump has done here. He said she made it up, she was a disgrace; he threatened her twice, he unleashed millions of others to flood her with hate. We played his deposition - he called her mentally sick, and threatened to sue

17/ Roberta Kaplan: Watch this CNN Town Hall
[Trump: My poll numbers went up [audience cheers] I have no idea who this woman is, she is a wack job]
Roberta Kaplan: Did you see that? The audience laughed. It made Ms. Carroll feel horribly

18/ RK: His attacks have intensified. While Ms. Carroll was still on the stand, he held a press conference - while you were still sitting the jury box - watch this
[Video of 40 Wall St press conference: It's a rigged deal, it's a made up fabricated story
Last Thursday he said, I've said it a thousand times, I never heard of E Jean Carroll and would never touch her.
Are you kidding me? A thousand times? It's up to you to make him stop. He is very wealthy. He said his brand is worth $10 billion

19/ Roberta Kaplan: He said Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.5 billion
Madaio: Objection. These are not personal assets.

Judge Kaplan: Overruled. The jury will remember what was said.

You can award punitive damages. Yesterday my cross showed he didn't come to 1st trial - but he came to this one - 🔥well until just now🔥 - because he cares about money. So your decision is the only hope

20/ Roberta Kaplan: Donald Trump can't even deny -
Madaio: Objection
Roberta Kaplan: .. he can't deny because of the first trial... Your Honor, can I go on?
Judge Kaplan: I overrule[d]
Roberta Kaplan: Donald Trump had been famous for years. Why did Ms. Carroll wait?

And via Klasfeld:

"At bottom, Trump's strategy is to blame the victim — pure and simple." [...]

"You know that's wrong. Donald Trump isn't the victim here."

21/ Press:

Roberta Kaplan: The so-called gap? Give me a break. The White House, which was run by Mr. Trump, had already denied -
Madaio: Objection.
Judge Kaplan: Overruled.]

22/ Roberta Kaplan: Judge Kaplan will tell you that a person who has been defamed has no duty to mitigate. Donald Trump's defense table, the first very day, made an argument that has no basis in law. They're saying she had a duty to keep her mouth shut

23/ [Me: RK is brilliant]

RK: Donald Trump claims she actually benefited. It takes a lot of gall to make an argument like that. Donald Trump's lawyer described Ms. Carroll as a fame-seeking monster-
Habba: Objection!
Judge: The jury will recall what was said
RK:I'm going to sit down in a couple of min, I promise. On behalf of E. Jean and our whole team, thank you for paying attention to the evidence which was ugly. How much will it take to fix her reputation? Between 7 to 12 million. We say 12.

24/ Roberta Kaplan: Next, we say another $12 million, probably much more. On punitives, I'm not going to tell you exactly how much. You can consider his wealth. 👉🏼Donald Trump is worth billions of dollars, 🤣he said that under oath. 👈🏼😂 This will take an unusually high award

25/ Roberta Kaplan: When you deliberate later today, consider we have a former President of the US who has shown contempt for the rule of law and our system of justice. Stand up for E. Jean Carroll and the rule of law.

🔥If not, none of us would ever be safe from bullies. There is a way: you have the opportunity, maybe even the responsibility, to put an end of this right now with your verdict -

👉🏼make him pay for what he has done👈🏼🔥

@GottaLaff

For Laffy - take care of yourself. ♥️

@GottaLaff

NFL - So is the orange turd present in court today? Judges admonishments make me think "Yes", but they could just be for his lawyers.

@jztusk @GottaLaff
He was there - he got up and walked out during plaintiff's closing arguments...coward.

@darthstar @jztusk @GottaLaff

Trump can't bear to be exposed. He's not used to hearing, in his parlance, "bad things" about himself, especially in front of people who hold his fate in their hands; he's used to bootlicking, not being at the mercy of people in a power position.

@darthstar He already lost. So… yeah

@GottaLaff This seems to be the “find out” part for Donald J. Trump.

@bhawthorne @GottaLaff

There is no "find out" stage for Trump.

Whatever happens, there's a lawyer to delay it, or someone to defuse it, or someone to pay for it. And every time, Trump uses it to fundraise and keep himself in the news.

Jail. Jail is the one punishment he cannot escape. Let's hope we get to that "find out" stage asap.

@TCatInReality @GottaLaff That’s a different case(s). I was talking about the E Jean Carroll defamation case.

@TCatInReality @GottaLaff Although I will admit I was hoping he would defy the judges order and speak out today instead of storming out of the courtroom. A little time in lockup for contempt of court would have been nice.

@bhawthorne @GottaLaff
I got that you were talking about the Carroll case, but this one will have zero impact on Trump (but is still critical to rule of law)

He will never pay any of his own money - and he has already gotten thousands of hours of free media from it.

As an aside, I do hope some judge locks him up for contempt - even if for one day. That will be a shock to his system.

@TCatInReality @GottaLaff He doesn’t have any of his own money. He lost all of that many failed businesses ago. Sure, he can go back to the well of OPM (Other Putin’s Money) to pay any judgements, but he is already dipping out of that well pretty heavily.

This trial isn’t about hurting Trump. It is about restitution for E Jean Carroll and sending a message to other would-be defamers that there are consequences to lies and defamation. Given Trump’s claim of billions of dollars of net worth, I hope the jury comes up with a punitive award in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

@bhawthorne @GottaLaff
💯. Rule of law requires Carroll gets the wins, until he stops.

As for Trump's money, I'm sure he has enormous sums hidden offshore.

@TCatInReality @GottaLaff I really doubt that. Despite all his pompousness, Trump is not one of the world’s oligarchs (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_), but just a wannabe. I think everything he might own is tied up in the Trump Organization, much of which will hopefully be liquidated by the NY fraud case.

en.wikipedia.orgList of wealthiest families - Wikipedia

@bhawthorne @GottaLaff
Perhaps.

If anything, I'm sure his Atlantic City bankruptcy debtors tracked down all his hidden money.

@GottaLaff

I like that Roberta Kaplan is helping the jury walk in Carroll's shoes. For me, that's affecting- imagine if it happened to you. The fear, the shock, the despair, the continuous verbal assaults and threats....

@GottaLaff

NFL

HAhahah I knew his false claims about the value of the estate would come back to bite him in the posterior!

@GottaLaff

"So your decision is the only hope"

Damn, that's good. And it's true.

@GottaLaff When opposing counsel is successfully channeling Princess Leah, you have lost.

@GottaLaff

"They're saying she had a duty to keep her mouth shut"

I freaking love attorney Kaplan! It really *is* about muzzling a victim of rape. Here, the muzzler has almost limitless power to do so.

@JaneDoeTheFirst @GottaLaff
Well, he does claim to have absolute immunity from anything criminal. 🤬🤬🤬

@sepfeiffer @GottaLaff

Yeah, which makes this a critical test for the rule of law.

@GottaLaff

lol.. I just about said the same RK is killing it...

@GottaLaff NFL. The downside of constantly exaggerating your wealth is when someone takes a fraction of your estimate, it hurts way, way more.

@GottaLaff NFL IIRC, the standard mafia business practice would be to burn down Mar-a-Lago about now.

@GottaLaff Rudy was ordered to pay $150M in punitive damages. Trump could easily pay twice that and it still wouldn't shut him up. He will keep refusing to pay and probably get away with it.

@GottaLaff

NFL When bragging about being a multi-billionaire is counterproductive … especially when you do it under oath‼️ 🤡🤣😂😹

@GottaLaff it's so awesome to see them use his inflation of his own wealth against him. "But you said under oath you're worth billions!" lol

@GottaLaff

If Shaye and Ruby can get 148 M punitive, that would be a good starting point.

@GottaLaff

NFL... geezus.. this is brutal... RK... is killing it...