OPINION:
New York City is enemy territory for President Trump, and no episode illustrates that better than the case of E. Jean Carroll.
Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump is now being examined by the U.S. attorney for Northern Illinois. Andrew S. Boutros is specifically looking at the payment of Ms. Carroll’s attorneys by mega-Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Mr. Trump is waiting to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear his appeal.
New York’s elected liberals are so toxic to Mr. Trump, a lifelong Big Apple guy, that he, like a lot of other Americans, has opted to leave a blue state for a red (in his case, Florida and his Mar-a-Lago home).
Alvin Bragg, the Democratic Manhattan prosecutor whose election was financed by mega-left-wing donor George Soros, created scores of felony charges over a nondisclosure agreement with a woman. He had help from President Biden’s No. 3 official at the Justice Department.
New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on a promise to ruin Mr. Trump. She filed a lawsuit against him for, of all things, taking out bank loans that he repaid in full. Ms. James and her Democratic judge said his appraisals were too high.
Manhattan also hosted Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump. Ms. Carroll accused him of sexual abuse at the trendy Bergdorf Goodman department store. No witnesses. No police report. No date. Ms. Carroll could not come up with a year, but then settled on 1995-1996, court filings show. Her story matches a plotline in an episode of “Law & Order.”
The 2023 trial setting: an arch-liberal Manhattan jury. U.S. District Court trial judge was Lewis A. Kaplan, appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton and now a senior judge (meaning he is part-time). He denied many of Mr. Trump’s evidence motions.
The jury sided with Ms. Carroll.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Mr. Trump’s appeal in an opinion released in December 2024, a month after he was elected president a second time.
The three judges were Denny Chin, appointed by President Obama; Susan Carney, also an Obama appointee; and Myrna Perez, appointed by Mr. Biden. Ms. Perez spent 16 years at the anti-Trump Brennan Center before the 2021 appointment.
Mr. Biden said in November 2022 that he was using all his powers to keep Mr. Trump from running again for president.
The three judges rejected Mr. Trump’s request to have the entire court hear the appeal.
In sum, Mr. Trump’s adjudicators were a Manhattan jury and four Democratic judges.
The rejected appeal was filed by Todd Blanche and an associate. Mr. Blanche is now acting attorney general. Mr. Trump named him attorney general pending Senate confirmation.
The story Mr. Blanche tells through his appeals brief is of a biased Judge Kaplan, who rejected multiple defense requests to admit evidence that would show Ms. Carroll was a liar.
“The court routinely, if not exclusively, resolved questions regarding inferences sought by Plaintiff in her favor,” Mr. Blanche wrote.
“[Ms. Carroll] manufactured a sexual assault that she alleged took place decades prior with no physical evidence to support her claim, and her testimony, alone, was incredible and inconsistent with reality or anything a reasonable juror could accept as true,” he said.
By not supplying a semi-specific date, she also ruled out the possibility that Mr. Trump could defend himself by saying he was not in town that day or that week.
“Plaintiff barely offered a rough estimate of the date of her politically motivated allegations, knowing full well that the lack of specificity would make her claims nearly impossible to specifically refute,” Mr. Blanche said.
Some Judge Kaplan rulings:
• Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit was personally urged by two Trump haters: George Conway, a former Lincoln Project operative, and billionaire donor Mr. Hoffman, who paid her hefty legal bills. “The involvement of Conway and Hoffman was concrete evidence demonstrating that Plaintiff and others had manufactured their claims for political reasons,” Mr. Blanche wrote.
Yet Judge Kaplan precluded the Trump team from ever mentioning Mr. Hoffman. Mr. Blanche alluded to Mr. Conway in his opening statement to the jury, but then Judge Kaplan ruled that he could not bring up the anti-Trump activist when he cross-examined Ms. Carroll.
• At a 2022 deposition, Ms. Carroll testified under oath that no one was paying her legal bills. “That was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said, but Judge Kaplan blocked Mr. Blanche from bringing it up to make the point that she had no credibility.
“Telling lies while bearing the burden of establishing a falsehood should have been devastating to the case, and President Trump was wrongly prevented from demonstrating that to the jury,” Mr. Blanche’s appeal states.
• Ms. Carroll said publicly that she had a sample of Mr. Trump’s DNA from the supposed attack, but she lied. Yet Judge Kaplan approved her motion to block any DNA testimony or argument.
• Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine journalist, testified that Mr. Trump forcibly kissed her in 2005 at his Mar-a-Lago home. Before the trial, Ms. Carroll interviewed Ms. Stoynoff and made a transcript.
Mr. Blanche said she coached the witness and tried to persuade Ms. Stoynoff to say Mr. Trump “grinded” on her. Ms. Stoynoff said she did not recall that, and Ms. Carroll told her to stop and “think about it.” Mr. Blanche asked to submit excerpts from the transcript as evidence. Judge Kaplan said no.
• Ms. Carroll never filed a police report because, Mr. Blanche said, “she knew that making false claims to the police or other public authorities could expose her to criminal penalties.” Judge Kaplan ordered Mr. Blanche not to question Ms. Carroll about the lack of a report.
• Mr. Blanche called a Kaplan decision “fanciful, untrue and a bridge too far” when the judge said Mr. Trump’s vulgar description of seducing women (“Access Hollywood” tape) could be a reference to Ms. Carroll.
The remaining issues: Will the Supreme Court take up the Trump request to overturn the verdict? Will Senate Democrats interrogate Mr. Blanche on Mr. Trump and Ms. Carroll?
Mr. Hoffman’s activist nonprofit, American Future Republic, is being investigated by the U.S. attorney in Chicago, according to press reports.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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