Trump's Luck To Run Out In Manhattan, Other Courts

E. Jean Carroll’s case, accusing Trump of sexual assault in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s, serves as a bookend to the Access Hollywood tape, which cemented Trump’s reputation for both sexual assault and immunity to consequences.

Photo Insert: E. Jean Carroll and her legal team make their way to oral arguments vs Trump.

But it also raises the question: Will Trump slither away again? Chances are, he won’t, Francis Wilkinson wrote in an essay for The Nation.

Despite a decades-long history of fleecing contractors on his building projects, diverting charitable contributions to his personal use, and defrauding students at his bogus university, Trump avoided arrest until earlier this month, when he showed up for his New York arraignment in the case of falsified reports of a hush-money payment to a porn star.

Yet, with criminal investigations in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., soon reaching their decision points, Trump’s crime spree may not keep paying quite so well. Trump has proved unable to fool all of the people all of the time. Trump has always been an expert circus performer.

However, he fares less well in the venue where crimes are prosecuted: The courtroom. Trump has a long record of fails in court—both as plaintiff and defendant. His 62 cases seeking to overturn the 2020 election results, many of them before judges he appointed himself were abject failures.

His defamation lawsuit against journalist Tim O’Brien provided no purchase against O’Brien’s reporting that Trump’s highly leveraged empire was a gaudy mirage. O’Brien’s lawyers exposed Trump as a liar and fantasist who established his net worth based on his own woozy “feelings.”

In 2018, the attorney general of New York sued the Trump Foundation, citing a pattern of misconduct. By the end of 2019, the faux foundation was shuttered and Trump was ordered to pay $2 million to charities.

The lawsuit against Trump’s skeevy “university” reached a similar end, with the scam shut down and Trump paying out $25 million in restitution. Trump’s reflexive lying is not a useful talent in the legal system.

Neither is grievance-mongering, blame-shifting, whataboutism, misogyny, racial aggression, ad hominem attacks, or other Trump core competencies. Courts are partial to facts, which have never been partial to Trump. Courts likewise reward preparation, discipline, and coherence, which can help steer fact patterns onto favorable terrain.

Trump, by contrast, is a notoriously sprawling mess. Out of one side of his mouth, he shouts that the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago are his rightful property, while out of the other, he claims they were planted by the FBI.

If you’re looking to establish consciousness of guilt, it’s hard to beat declaring that the papers taken from your office were planted by the deep state. Crooked cops, after all, don’t plant evidence of innocence.

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