Trump rants against ‘racist’ E. Jean Carroll, ‘terrible’ case judge
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump raged on social media early Wednesday against both his accuser and the judge who ruled against him in a sexual abuse and defamation civil case, just hours after he was found liable for a 1996 incident.
“The partisan Judge & Jury on the just concluded Witch Hunt Trial should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for allowing such a travesty of Justice to take place,” Trump, 76, posted to Truth Social at 1 a.m. Wednesday.
The 45th president went on to claim that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan should have allowed more evidence to be presented to the jury, including a dress that his accuser, writer E. Jean Carroll, said she’d worn the day of the assault and may have contained Trump’s DNA.
“The ‘Dress,’ which played such a big roll [sic] early on as a threatening bluff, but which ended up being totally exculpatory, was not allowed into the trial as evidence,” he claimed. “Nor was her cat’s name, ‘Vagina,’ the racist name she called her Black husband, ‘Ape,’ getting caught in a lie on the political operative paying for this Hoax, & much more!”
In another post about an hour later, Trump lapsed into the third person, claiming Kaplan “hated President Donald J. Trump more than is humanly possible.”
“He is a terrible person, completely biased, and should have RECUSED himself when asked to do so. He quickly refused!” Trump wrote. “This case should never have been allowed to be tried in this completely partisan venue, perhaps the worst for me in the Nation! The whole Rigged Hoax is yet another TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE, a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt of all time!!!”
The rant came after Manhattan jurors awarded Carroll an approximately $5 million settlement Tuesday after finding a preponderance of evidence that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her, but not that he had raped her.
While $2 million of the award was granted for the sexual abuse, the remainder was for an Oct. 12, 2022, Truth Social post in which Trump called her account of the incident a “hoax.” But that didn’t stop him from taking to his social media platform to call out Carroll again after the verdict was rendered.
By 7 a.m., Trump was back to his regular drumbeat, arguing that the trial was “ALL ABOUT ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” The 45th president is campaigning to become the nation’s 47th commander-in-chief and has been leading Republican presidential candidate polls in recent months.
“I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN, WHO MADE A FALSE AND TOTALLY FABRICATED ACCUSATION, IS. HOPEFULLY JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED ON APPEAL!” the former president wrote.
Carroll had said Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in the 1990s, attacking her after asking for her opinion on a see-through, lacy negligee he claimed to be interested in purchasing for another woman.
After some playful banter, she testified, Trump led her into an open fitting room of the Fifth Avenue department store, where he pinned her against the wall and bumped her head twice, during what she called a “fight.” He then penetrated her with his fingers and penis, she claimed, saying she could “still feel the pain” of his fingers inside her.
In a statement through her attorney Tuesday, Carroll said she filed suit against Trump “to clear my name and to get my life back.”
“Today, the world finally knows the truth,” she said. “This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
Trump, who also faces a criminal hush-money case in Manhattan and is under investigation by the Justice Department for hoarding highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate following his presidency as well as for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, recently changed his Truth Social profile description to address the mounting cases against him.
“THEY’RE NOT COMING AFTER ME, THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU,” it reads. “I’M JUST STANDING IN THEIR WAY!”
