Trump Gets Guts Ripped Out by Appeals Court in Final Order

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0:30Michael Popok:We got a new ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that says that Donald Trump is a depraved, defamer and abuser of E. Jean Carroll. And that the$83.5 million judgment, now up to$100 million judgment for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll and the defamation stands. Second Circuit Court of Appeals and their final ruling now against Donald Trump. and all I got to read for 70 pages in their order, which I'm going to describe for you here on Legal AF, is event after event after event that shows the incompetence of Alina Abba, the lawyer that was handling the case for Donald Trump. She screwed up, what's the phrase, royally, both in the courtroom during the trial and on appeal, in related appeals to the case.

1:18Michael Popok:And that's one of the major reasons that Donald Trump just lost his, for the third time against E. Jean Carroll. She already has affirmed on appeal a$5.5 million judgment for the original sexual abuse, but she had two trials. She's the only person I know of in the world in history that has succeeded against Donald Trump not once but twice, in this case taking over$100 million off of him because she was the victim of his sexual abuse and defamation. And the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the finest appellate courts of the land, with a three-judge panel, three-zero, just ruled that Alina Habas screwed up, that Trump and her waived any argument of absolute presidential immunity because they never raised it, that the immunity decision on criminal immunity by the United States Supreme Court that happened a couple of summers ago doesn't help them here and doesn't fix the waiver problem, meaning they failed to raise it in a timely fashion, that nothing that Judge Kaplan did in the case involving the 83 and a half million dollar jury verdict, nothing was reversible error.

2:29Michael Popok:And wait till I read to you aloud all the things that Alina Hobbit did wrong and remind you of all the things that Donald Trump did. Plus, I've got an interview of E. Jean Carroll that I participated in about a month or two ago about this case. I had another interview that I did with Robbie Kaplan, her lawyer. And you'll see how prophetic those interviews were and are now here on Midas Touch. I'm Michael Popok. Let's get to the headline. Yet another three-judge panel, rules in favor of E. Jean Carroll. Now, this is about the$83.5 million judgment of a jury, 9-0 in favor of E. Jean Carroll. This is the trial in which Donald Trump testified.

3:13Michael Popok:In the first trial, she proved that she was sexually assaulted, technically, as the judge said, technically raped under New York law in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York, catty corner on Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, that she bumped into, she testified convincingly along with supporting evidence that she bumped into Donald Trump on the way into Bergdorf Goodman, a department store, to go shopping, and it ended in a dark and terrible place of her being sexually abused. The only reason the jury did not find rape per se is because at the time the law of New York said if you don't, if the person didn't use their penis or you don't know if they did, and she had her eyes closed as she testified, then it's sexual assault.

4:01Michael Popok:That's the only reason. Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge, says that's effectively and technically rape. The jury in the first trial, based on statements that Donald Trump made in June of 2022, after he'd left the presidency, awarded her$5 million. They then had the second trial about statements he made while he was president. And all the attacks he continued to do between the first trial and the second trial. In fact, Robbie Kaplan, who you'll hear from in a minute during my interview, said that he would not stop even up through and the day of the trial. And so she looked the jury in the eye in that trial and said, come up with a large enough amount of money.

4:42Michael Popok:He's a billionaire. She used his own numbers against him. She said, he's a billionaire. You need to award enough money to make him stop defaming my client. And they came back with$83.5 million, of which$65 million or so was punitive damages. Donald Trump didn't like the punitive damage amount. He said he had presidential immunity. He said he didn't like things that Lewis Kaplan did as the judge, that he cut him off from testifying to the jury. This was all before the three-judge panel, Judge Chin, Judge Miriam, and Judge Kahn. But that case stood on the shoulders of another case from 2023, in which another panel led by Judge Cabranes had already ruled that Alina Haba and Donald Trump had waived presidential immunity.

5:32Michael Popok:While they raised supremacy clause immunity, they didn't raise presidential immunity. And under federal practice, you need to raise a defense expressly in your pleadings and at trial in order for you to be able to have the benefit of it. Now, when the 2023 ruling on presidential criminal immunity, not civil, this is a civil case, came out by the Supreme Court, they jumped up and down on the Trump side. We need to raise the issue. We need to raise presidential immunity, Alina, because you didn't raise it originally. It's weird, too, right? Because he was a president when he made the statements that were at the heart of the$83.5 million judgment.

6:10Michael Popok:How do you not raise presidential immunity? They said, well, there was an intervening factor, a big Supreme Court case. And now this panel says, no, that doesn't matter. That was about criminal. It didn't say anything about waiver. All right, let's get down to the case. Now, to remind you of who E. Jean Carroll is, she worked for Elle magazine. She was a well-known advice columnist. columnist. She was married to a well-known newscaster, John Johnson, on ABC News at the time in New York. And she's the person that Donald Trump said wasn't my type. Remember that? Wasn't my type. So I could not have raped her or sexually abused her.

6:50Michael Popok:But then that critical moment that got played for the jury is when Donald Trump being interrogated by Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer for E.G. Carroll, that fateful moment in the deposition where she said, let me show you a photo and I'm going to show you the clip in a minute. Here's a photo that he denied of having ever met E. Jean Carroll of him, E. Jean Carroll, E. Jean Carroll's husband, John Johnson and Ivana, along with Donald Trump. Donald Trump confused matters and thought that was that was Marla Maples, his other wife. He thought two wives were in the photo. proving to the jury not that that was a defense that it wasn't my type but he found eugene carol attractive before he sexually abused her because he confused her with his own wife let me play that clip in front of you a black and white photograph that we've marked as djt 23 and i'm going to ask you is this the photo that you were just referring to i think so yes and do you recall when you first saw this photo at some point during the process I saw that's I guess her husband John Johnson who was an anchor for ABC nice guy I thought I mean I don't know him but I thought he was pretty good at what he did I don't even know who the woman let's see I don't know who it's Marla

8:18You're saying Marla's in this photo? That's Marla, yeah. That's my wife. Which woman are you pointing to? No. Here. The person you just pointed to was E.J. Carol. Who is that? Who is this? And the person, the woman on the right is your then wife? I don't know. This was the picture. I assume that's John Johnson. Is that Carol? Because it's very blurry.

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10:03Michael Popok:Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made. Go to TryMiracle.com slash Legal AF and use the code Legal AF to claim your free three-piece towel set and save over 40 % off. Again, that's TryMiracle.com slash Legal AF to treat yourself. Thank you, Miracle Made, for sponsoring this episode. Now, fast forward. I asked E. Jean Carroll in an interview that I did over the summer when I had the pleasure and the honor to speak with her directly about this particular ruling that was about to come out and her feelings on it. And she very, very graciously and politely turned it back to me to give my analysis. We had a funny back and forth.

10:43Michael Popok:Here's the clip. Where does the case stand right now at this point? Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. Well, Michael, what do you think? Take it away. I think the two appeals that he's tried at the Second Circuit based on the panels, including Judge Chen, who I know pretty well, they've rejected him. He's not going to be able to assert immunity, which was waived by Alina Hava and others a long, long time ago. And a long, long time ago, as referenced in the back-to-back oral arguments that Robbie so successfully argued in the last month or so. I don't see the United States Supreme Court, even this MAGA right-wing court, being that interested in events that happened when he was citizen Trump, when he attacked you and defamed you at all.

11:36Michael Popok:There's only one event or one series of events that happened when he was even president, which was the defamation after the fact. I just don't see this court in a civil matter having given him carte blanche in the criminal world, even they bailing him out and trying to do anything to undermine your judgments. That's my opinion.

11:59I concur. Looking good. Looking good. Yeah. I like that. Does Robbie or anybody else give you a timeline on how this is going to work out or when? No, but we have a foundation already set up, lobe and lobe, by the chair, Rachel Harris of the State Department. We've got the foundation ready to go. We're just waiting for the money, and then that money is going to be given out.

12:28Michael Popok:I know, Ben, my podcast partner, was trying to convince you not to give it all out. I think he mentioned something about it. He wanted to see you have it. No, I don't need it. You know what? I'm 81. I know money doesn't make me happy. You know, adventure, going for a walk with the dogs, having a great fettuccine Alfredo. That's the stuff that makes me happy. All right. That's E. Jean Carroll. We love her here on the network and honor her and everything that she does. And once again, just got her 83 and a half million dollars affirmed. Let me read to you from the critical passages about the biggest part of the case, which was Donald Trump arguing that the 65 million in punitives was too large.

13:11Michael Popok:They said, no, given the egregious facts that were proven in court, it's just the right size. Here's what the court said on page 67. In fashioning the punitive award, the jury was instructed to consider, among other factors, the amount necessary to deter Mr. Trump from continuing to defame Ms. Carroll. Upon review of the evidence, we agree with the district court that the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty. For nearly five years, the three-judge panel wrote today, Trump never wavered or relented in his public attacks on Carroll, even when faced with the jury's unanimous verdict in the first trial and the district court's ruling in this case.

13:55Michael Popok:Because in this case, before he went to trial, the judge on summary judgment found that the new jury was going to be instructed properly that Donald Trump had already lost on the sexual abuse part and all they were to focus on was the damages. Even knowing that, even knowing he'd lost the trial, even knowing that he had lost going into this trial, he continued unrelenting assault, verbal assault, a defamatory assault on E. Jean Carroll. In fact, the court says on page 67, Trump made these attacks within 48 hours of the verdict in the first case and launched similar attacks against Carroll in the days and weeks leading up to this trial.

14:37Michael Popok:He then made at least four more statements during the course of the trial itself. The statements all shared a common theme. Trump continued to assert that Carroll was lying about the 1996 sexual assault and that she was motivated to do so for personal, financial and political reasons and to imply that Carroll was too unattractive to be sexually assaulted. He also began to claim that Carroll's lawsuit was part of a conspiracy to interfere with the 2024 election and vowed to continue to make similar statements in the future. Given this extraordinary and unprecedented conduct, we conclude that the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages was neither unpredictable nor unreasonable in relation to the actual harm that had occurred and the harm likely to result and upheld the$65 million component of the total$83.5 million judgment.

15:29Michael Popok:Now, I asked Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer for E.G. Carroll, just about a month ago when she was on the show with me about this particular set of proceedings. Let's play my interview with Robbie Kaplan. The much bigger verdict, the big kahuna verdict, which was the second trial, the 80 plus million dollars. It has two components to it. It has this component that we just won on last Friday, which is very late in the process. after the appellate case had already been briefed, Trump decided to have the attorney general recertify the case under the Westfall Act. We had a frolic and a detour of two and a half years through various courts on that issue.

16:11And then Trump tried to raise it again. And the Second Circuit said no. And last Friday, they just issued an order saying no, no, no. There are very good, three very good reasons why this is totally unfair and it's totally too late. Forget about it. And then the merits part of the case, which is also about waiver. This case is just full of waiver. Everywhere you look, there's waiver. But the Second Circuit heard arguments on whether or not Trump had waived presidential immunity because when you have an immunity claim, you get interlocutory appeal. So they'd already decided that once. They now have to decide it again.

16:48And given the decision last Friday, my guess is we'll see an opinion on that very shortly. They're certainly going to try to take it to the Supreme Court. Maybe they'll try to seek en banc just to get more delay. They probably will. So that's a little bit farther out in terms of timing.

17:03Michael Popok:Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the kind of update. And explain to our audience, because they are now interested in this. They're nerd out on this. Why is it the same three-judge Second Circuit panel for both of these overlapping issues? So the reason is because it came up interlocutory, the panel that decided originally that he had waived presidential meeting before trial, which was Chin, Cabranes, Khan. Right. Typically, you don't want to have new judges learn the same issue. So the court naturally assigned it as much as they could to the same panel. There's one judge who's different. We now have Miriam instead of Cabranes.

17:40I assume Judge Cabranes was away or couldn't travel or something. But it makes sense. Why would you have a whole set of new judges learn the exact same issue?

17:48Michael Popok:So what's going to happen next? Well, Robbie's often right, usually right. And she thinks they're going to ask for what's called an en banc review, 20 or so full judges of the Second Circuit, just to delay things inevitably. because they don't believe that Trump's side doesn't believe they can win at the United States Supreme Court on a sexual abuse slash punitive damage defamation case, even with this MAGA right-wing Supreme Court. This is fantastic news for justice, and particularly E. Jean Carroll. Now, I hope, I know what she said in my interview, she cares more about a plate of fettuccine Alfredo at this point, But she is setting up a, and is not willing, doesn't want to keep any of the money.

18:34Michael Popok:But she has set up a foundation. This money will go to fund, as she said, all the things that will piss off Donald Trump and help Americans and women in particular. I'm glad you're here on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. Come over to Legal AF Substack, where I have posted this Second Circuit decision for you to read it cover to cover as we continue to cover all great things about E. Jean Carroll getting justice for herself and other women. Remember, there was a number of women that testified in that case against Donald Trump about their being sexually assaulted and being victimized by him as well.

19:06Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popak. You're on Midas Touch Network.

19:28Michael Popok:What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. so I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required.

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