Even rape guilt fails to derail Trump train
NEW YORK: The morning after a victorious night at the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump was back in a New York courtroom for the selection of a jury that must decide how much he owes a woman who accused him of rape.
The former president, sitting a few rows behind his accuser, author and journalist E Jean Carroll, shook his head as Judge Lewis Kaplan explained to the potential jurors that “for the purposes of this trial, it has been determined already that Mr Trump did sexually assault Ms Carroll”.
As Mr Trump, 77, sat in the courtroom – where both he and his lawyers are subject to a strict ruling prohibiting them from denying this finding – a series of posts on his social media account denied her claims and called them “PURE FICTION”.
At the end of the day’s proceedings on Tuesday, Mr Trump wasted little time getting back on the campaign trail. He left the courthouse at about 3pm to head to the northeastern state of New Hampshire, which will hold the nation’s second presidential nomination contest next Tuesday, and straight to a rally at the Atkinson Country Club.
Ms Carroll, 80, alleges Trump raped her in a changing room at a New York de partment store in the mid’90s. She sued him in 2019 after he denied the claims and tried to claim she had made up the story to sell a memoir.
The case is being heard eight months after a New York jury decided, in a civil case before the same judge, that Mr Trump did sexually assault Ms Carroll and defamed her in October 2022 when he denied it, awarding her $US5m.
It did not find Mr Trump had raped Ms Carroll, but Justice Kaplan has ruled that because the jury did conclude that he sexually assaulted her with his fingers, her claim of rape was “substantially true”.
Justice Kaplan said last week: “This trial will not be a ‘do over’ of the previous trial. The fact that Mr Trump sexually abused – indeed raped – Ms Carroll has been conclusively established.”
The jury must instead consider the question of the damage his statements did to Ms Carroll, and Mr Trump’s state of mind when he made them.
As jury selection got under way, a post on Mr Trump’s account on his social media platform Truth Social declared the trial a witch-hunt backed by President Joe Biden, and called the case “fake”.
New Hampshire’s vote, held in a state considered more centrist than Iowa, is eagerly awaited by political experts, who warn it’s too early to consider Mr Trump a foregone conclusion for the Republican nomination, even after his landslide victory in Iowa.
His rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have pressed on, despite most polls suggesting that their chances of beating Mr Trump to the Republican nomination are thin at best.
The debate scheduled before New Hampshire’s January 23 primary was cancelled after Ms Haley said she would attend only if Mr Trump did.
Mr Trump has skipped the debates thus far, and has no intention of changing tack. He is expected to press home his advantage in New Hampshire by stressing the real contest now is the election on November 5 when he is expected to take on President Biden, 81, in a rerun of the 2020 vote.