Judge confirms it's fair to call Trump a rapist, so Ted Lieu does just that in the House

[Brexiter]

As steeped as we progressives are in the yeasty lagoons of Donald Trump’s septic psyche, it’s sometimes easy to forget that many Americans have only a vague understanding of just how rapey the dude is—and always has been. That said, it’s inaccurate to call him a “convicted rapist.” He was unanimously found by a jury in a civil trial to have violently sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room. In other words—totally innocent. Get your facts straight, you lying snowflake cucks!

When the jury ruled in E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit against Trump in which the journalist claimed Trump had assaulted her and then defamed her by lying about it, they failed to conclude that she’d been “raped” based on New York’s narrow legal definition of the term, which specifies forcible entry of the penis. And that apparently gave Trump hope that he could muddy the waters surrounding the jury’s very clear verdict.

Now, most people found civilly liable for sexual assault would permanently slink away and voluntarily live in quiet exile somewhere. And they definitely wouldn’t revisit the case they’d just lost by suing the original plaintiff over the accusation. But Trump has long been estranged from most people, so he instead fought back like a furious chimpanzee whose only available weapon is a pile of feces. He sued Carroll for defamation based on the fact that her rape accusation wasn’t technically held up by the jury—and man oh man, is the shit ever flying now.

In a stern rebuke to Trump and his lawyers, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied Trump’s motion for a new trial and a reassessment of the compensatory damage award levied against him. And in his ruling, Kaplan made his meaning plain: Trump is a rapist, and it’s fair to call him one.

Sign the petition: I believe survivors of sexual harassment, abuse and assault.

From Kaplan’s (graphic) July 19 ruling:

Mr. Trump now contends that the jury’s $2 million compensatory damages award for Ms. Carroll’s sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that he had not “raped” Ms. Carroll. Its verdict, he says, could have been based upon no more than “groping of [Ms. Carroll’s] breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.” And while Mr. Trump is right that a $2 million award for such groping alone could well be regarded as excessive, that undermines rather than supports his argument. His argument is entirely unpersuasive. This jury did not award Ms. Carroll more than $2 million for groping her breasts through her clothing, wrongful as that might have been. There was no evidence at all of such behavior.

Instead, the proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm. Mr. Trump’s argument therefore ignores the bulk of the evidence at trial, misinterprets the jury’s verdict, and mistakenly focuses on the New York Penal Law definition of “rape” to the exclusion of the meaning of that word as it often is used in everyday life and of the evidence of what actually occurred between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump.

In other words—holy shit! A judge just said it’s fair to say that the 45th president of the United States is a fucking rapist!

That was last week. Guess what? Kaplan wasn’t done.

In a Tuesday memorandum responding to Carroll’s motion for an amended complaint, which was filed after Trump continued defaming her in the wake of his court loss, Kaplan doubled down, claiming once again that a jury found that Trump is indeed a rapist according to the common understanding of the term.

Trump’s ace legal team keeps finding new ways to get the federal judge to clarify in writing that his sexual battery of E. Jean Carroll was rape according to a common understanding of the word. https://t.co/QLWOVo1IAi pic.twitter.com/fru1kwUyIt

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 26, 2023

From Kaplan’s Tuesday memorandum:

As this Court explained in its recent decision denying Mr. Trump’s motion in Carroll II [the defamation case Carroll won] for a new trial on damages or other relief, the Carroll II jury’s answer to the special verdict question concerning whether Mr. Trump “raped” Ms. Carroll established only that she had failed to prove that he penetrated her vagina with his penis. Indeed, the jury’s finding that Mr. Trump sexually abused her implicitly determined that he had penetrated her vagina with his fingers, a form of “rape” as that word is often used.

…

Ms. Carroll’s claim that Mr. Trump defamed her in his 2019 statements never has hinged on the precise manner in which she claimed he raped her, “rape” being a term of various meanings. It instead has been centered on whether Mr. Trump defamed her by asserting that she made up an entirely fictitious account of a forcible sexual assault by Mr. Trump in order to increase sales of her book and/or carry out a political agenda, among other things. While Ms. Carroll has used the word “rape,” the controversy between the parties has always centered on whether Trump attacked Ms. Carroll sexually, thus rendering his 2019 statements false and defamatory, not about the specific anatomical details of the assault.

In other words, Kaplan’s saying that “nothing has really changed since last Wednesday. Donald Trump is still a rapist.”

Also on Tuesday, California Rep. Ted Lieu—a top congressional Trump-hater—immortalized Trump’s sins into the congressional record.

Watch:

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Transcript!

LIEU: “On July 19, 2023, federal judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial and confirmed that Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll. I’m going to submit this court ruling into the congressional record, and now I’m going to read you what the judge found.

On page 43, the judge wrote, ‘Ms. Carroll testified that the sexual assault—the ‘rape’—of which she accused Mr. Trump involved especially painful, forced digital penetration.’ The judge further writes, ‘The testimony of the outcry witnesses, Mss. [Lisa] Birnbach and [Carol] Martin, corroborated the essence of Ms. Carroll’s account of a violent, traumatic sexual assault.’

On page 44, the judge wrote, ‘The jury’s finding of sexual abuse therefore necessarily implies that it found that Mr. Trump forcibly penetrated her vagina.’ The judge further writes, ‘In other words, that he ‘raped’ her.’”

Thanks, Rep. Lieu, for spreading the word. If only so many Americans weren’t determined to return this rapist, racist, and unrepentant insurrectionist to the highest office in the land. At least Trump’s “hit a brick wall while trying to entice big-name law firms” to represent him elsewhere. Sign the petition: I believe survivors of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.


Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.