Although his endless public belligerence may feel distracting, President Donald Trump remains credibly accused of sexual assault by numerous women, including longtime writer E. Jean Carroll. The author filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in New York after he publicly derided her for her story of him assaulting her, and now, the president’s legal team has lashed out with a desperate motion for the judge to dismiss the case. Their argument is that the court lacks personal jurisdiction over Trump because he spoke about Carroll in D.C. Now, Trump has even changed his residency from New York to Florida — but none of that changes the facts of Carroll’s defamation case against the president.
The author’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan insists:
‘When E. Jean’s case was filed, Donald Trump maintained a home in New York, was registered to vote in New York, paid taxes in New York, and had been sued in New York on numerous occasions — including since 2016 — without any objection. Tellingly, as his papers make clear, what this motion is really about is a transparent effort to avoid discovery at all costs in a case involving a sexual assault.’
In reality, Trump is trying to turn issues that are out of Carroll’s control against the author. The president’s legal team notes, for instance, that Carroll supposedly didn’t even serve the president with her complaint in New York, but Secret Service agents apparently blocked her from doing so at Trump Tower. A judge consequently ruled that she could serve the complaint by mailing it to the White House — details which make the president seem only increasingly desperate to get out of this case.
Throughout the course of the emergence of the now numerous sexual assault allegations against him, Trump has always bluntly asserted his supposed innocence and outlandishly derided his accusers — which has already sparked other legal challenges, like another defamation lawsuit against him from accuser Summer Zervos. That case remains active and has a currently in place discovery and deposition deadline of January 30.
During the 2016 presidential campaign season, when some of the stories first began coming out, Trump even mocked an accuser’s appearance and suggested she wasn’t attractive enough to warrant any kind of attention, let alone assault. That’s the depth to which Trump has dragged the presidency and the United States along with him.
Another allegation against him came out just recently. In her new book, former Fox News reporter Courtney Friel says that in 2010, Trump asked her if she wanted to come to Trump Tower and kiss him, although at the time, they were both married (to other people, obviously).
Friel — who also noted that she “totally” believes other Trump accusers — wrote:
‘I was shocked. This proposition made it difficult for me to report with a straight face on Trump running for president.’
There is plenty of circumstantial support for all of these allegations about the president’s behavior. He has repeatedly displayed vulgar sexism, virulently deriding female counterparts of his whenever and wherever it suits him, including but not limited to the infamous Access Hollywood tape on which he can be heard bragging about committing sexual assault.
