'Trump is concerned': Legal expert says ex-president is worried he just met his match
Among the cases and 91 criminal counts former President Donald Trump is facing — the civil case involving his rape accuser E. Jean Carroll is one that is reportedly worrying him.
Former federal prosecutor Faith Gay appearing on MSNBC explained how federal Judge Lewis Kaplan is no-mess about keeping civility and order.
"He knows that Judge Kaplan runs the courtroom with a pretty tight set of controls," she said. "He knows that Judge Kaplan has no problem in speaking back to him or to his lawyers — not that Judge Kaplan is one-sided or the other — but that he is going to ensure that there is a fair trial, that these jurors are not intimidated, that they get a chance to hear the evidence."
Carroll’s Manhattan trial is about damages for defamatory comments the 45th president made about her back in 2019 when she came forward with sexual assault allegations from decades ago.
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Last May, a jury favored Carroll in the civil trial, which found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump also lost the liable portion of the case forcing him to be stricken from trying to possibly re-litigate it.
For all of these reasons, Gay is confident the only way Trump shows would be as a brief cameo.
"I don't think that there is any reason to doubt that Trump is concerned about that," she said.
As to whether he shows or not, she said: "He might make a cameo appearance, but given that Miss Carroll's trial team has already said that they need some help in controlling Mr. Trump, so there won't be an outburst, like in the AG's [civil fraud] case.
"My sense is that if he shows up, it will be in and out, and he's not going to get away with what he did in the A.G. case."
She notes that in this case Trump's "guilt is already established" and now that it's in the compensatory phase where Carroll is seeking $10 million in punitive damages — she believes the jury "has real power" to possibly award the sum to her.