E. Jean Carroll v Trump: Trump Skulks Away to Scotland

E. Jean Carroll and Friends Shine a Light on Trump's--and Tacopina's-- Ways

It is perhaps the fairest of all things that Justice, modeled after the Greek goddess Dike, is personified as blind and holding scales and a sword—and perhaps most appropriate of all that Justice is characterized as a woman. The E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump case, under the gavel of Judge Lewis Kaplan, has proved to be a heartening example that justice, even if it comes late, is worth the effort.

This trial has shown us what it looks like for a 79-year-old woman to stand down one of the most powerful people in the world, one with a reputation for the sadistic treatment of anyone who stands up to him.

And it has been remarkable to watch E. Jean Carroll deal with Joe Tacopina—a mini-me Trump clone who bullies like his client, spews misogynistic screed like his client, and badgers those who stand up to his client.

E. Jean Carroll

Last Wednesday Carroll outlined in excruciating and shocking detail exactly what she says Trump did to her in Bergdorf Goodman when she was, then, 52 years old. The testimony took more than seven hours.

Then, on Thursday, Joe Tacopina, who has previously destroyed allegedly raped women on the stand and won cases doing it, began two days of cross-examination that drew rage from women’s rights advocates, rape victims, and lawyers, male and female across the country and the world.

Many expressed dismay that several years after #MeToo, a lawyer in America would behave as he has. Michael Epner of The Daily Beast called Tacopina’s scorched-earth siege of Carroll “shameful” and noted:

This may have been the most tone-deaf cross-examination in a rape trial since To Kill A Mockingbird.

All through Carroll’s testimony, her attorneys objected; all afternoon Judge Kaplan sustained one after another of their challenges.

Over the weekend, of course, Tacopina penned his 18-page tantrum demanding that Judge Lewis Kaplan declare a mistrial OR revisit his every action in the trial, accusing him of bias. Kaplan dispensed with this nonsense motion with one word: Denied.

Monday’s cross-examination of Carroll was characterized by the same badgering, endless repetition, and judgmental aspersions—”Why didn’t you scream?”—to which he’d subjected Carroll before.

Lisa Birnbach

The day Lisa Birnbach agreed to testify in this case was a bad day for Donald Trump. Birnbach is a first-tier freelance writer for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Parade, Rolling Stone, and New York and a commentator on CBS’s The Early Show. She co-authored The Official Preppy Handbook, which sold half a million copies and occupied the #1 spot on the New York Times Best Seller List for 38 weeks.

Lisa Birnbach, now 66, is the friend E. Jean Carroll phoned only five minutes after the assault. Birnbach described Carroll as “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” in the spring if 1996. Birnbach recalls her friend saying, “Lisa, you’re not going to believe what happened to me.” Birnbach said. The Guardian describes Birnbach as saying:

“E Jean said to me many times, ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights,’ almost like she couldn’t believe it had just happened to her,” she said. Birnbach said Carroll described Trump forcing first his fingers then his penis into her vagina.

“As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn’t know the word, I ducked out of the room and I whispered, ‘E Jean, he raped you, you should go to the police.’ She said: ‘No, no I don’t want to go to the police.’ I said: ‘He raped you. I’ll take you to the police,’” Birnbach recounted.

Birnbach said Carroll was determined. “She said, ‘Promise me you will never speak of this again and promise me you will tell no one,’” Birnbach testified. “And I promised both of those things.”

Jessica Leeds

Jessica Leeds, now 71, is one of two women allowed by Judge Kaplan to give evidence regarding Donald Trump’s alleged sexual assaults. Leeds and Trump sat together in first class on a flight to New York. After chatting and having dinner, Leeds says Trump suddenly

“decided to kiss me and grope me. He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40 million hands. It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength.”

Leeds pulled away from him and fled to the back of the aircraft.

Leeds went public with her account of the alleged attack after Trump denied having sexually assaulted women mere weeks before the 2016 election.

Leeds saw Trump once more, in 2019, when she was volunteering at a Humane Society event.

“He looked at me and he said, ‘I remember you, you’re that cunt from the airplane,’” Leeds said. “It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.”

Dr. Leslie Lebowitz

Late in the day, Dr, Leslie Lebowitz testified about the impact of the alleged rape on Carroll’s state mind. She had, Lebowitz said, been damaged in three main ways: She is plagued by “painful intrusive memories,” suffers from a “diminishment” in how she thinks and feels about herself, and, most significantly, “manifests avoidance syndromes” that have stopped her from having a romantic life in all of the time since the assault.

Dr. Lebowitz will continue testifying Wednesday morning.

The consensus is still that E. Jean Carroll is winning this case.

We will update again tomorrow evening.