Lionel Shriver has narrated this article for you to listen to.
I’m an unlikely defender of Donald Trump. Politically, he’s not my boy. Most of the former president’s hyperbolic rants make me cringe. Yet last week, I had to agree with DT that a jury’s award of $83.3 million of his assets to E. Jean Carroll for defamation was ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
Keeping track of all the cases against Trump can be challenging, so let’s review. In 2019, while Trump was still president, Carroll went public with the accusation that back in 1995 – or was it 1996 – he raped her in the lingerie dressing room of Manhattan’s upscale clothing retailer Bergdorf Goodman. Trump denied the encounter had ever occurred and claimed he’d never met the woman; she was ‘totally lying’ and besides, she was not his type. Previously an advice columnist for Elle magazine, Carroll sued Trump for defamation, the case soon getting bogged down by appeals.
This case looks to the ‘wrong’ half of the electorate like one more attempt to hamper Trump’s presidential bid
In 2022, Carroll sued Trump in civil court for rape.
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