This travesty goes beyond politics

A New York jury has ruled that Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll, a writer he was found to have defamed by denying her allegation of sexual assault.

 Trump immediately described the verdict, with his usual contempt for punctuation, as a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt”. In other words, the trial and the verdict were politically motivated.

I wish it were as simple as that. If the jury of seven men and two women had found for the plaintiff simply because it abhorred the defendant’s politics, that would represent a gross travesty of justice. A fair jury should judge the facts put before it, not politics.

However, unless that practice became endemic, one could only deplore that particular miscarriage of justice, without extrapolating to a much wider cultural and civilisational malaise. Yet my fear, nay near-certainty, is that the jury genuinely believed Trump was guilty. If that’s so, then one is justified in pondering a civilisational collapse, not just a flawed justice system.

Anyway, even if the judge had had a political grudge against Trump, which is probable, it wouldn’t have been an easy matter to appeal to the jurors’ sense of political rectitude. Especially if Trump’s defence had done its job during the selection.  

Granted, New York City is as likely to vote for the KKK Grand Wizard as for any Republican candidate, never mind one as unapologetically divisive as Trump. Yet even in that thoroughly ‘liberal’ city it should be possible to find nine people who aren’t obsessed with Leftie zealotry.

Trump’s problem had to be the one I touched on the other day. People have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they automatically assume anyone accused of any sex crime is guilty as charged.

Had they gone strictly by the evidence of the case, they would have found for the defendant in, appropriately, a New York minute – expressing into the bargain their disbelief that so flimsy a case had been brought to court in the first place.

According to Miss Carroll, Trump had persistently defamed her by calling her a liar. I don’t get this.

If he didn’t bring her veracity into question, that would be tantamount to admitting rape. Had Trump done so, he would have faced a criminal trial, not a civil one. And he would have been sentenced to a prison term that, considering his age, would have meant life without parole.

Trump would have been a madman not to call Miss Carroll a liar, although I’m sure he must have used rather intemperate language in doing so. Old Donald isn’t exactly known for subtlety and refinement.

This was another case of a retrospective rape the claimant suddenly recalled years after the event. Thirty years ago, to be exact, was when Miss Carroll ran into Trump at an upmarket department store.

According to her, they had briefly met once before; according to Trump, they hadn’t. That’s a moot point: either way, they were total strangers. Even if she is right, Trump can be forgiven for having forgotten the single encounter. I for one can’t remember everyone I met 30 years ago, and Trump’s circle of contacts is wider than mine by orders of magnitude.

Having bumped into the woman he barely knew if at all, Trump nevertheless asked her to help him choose lingerie for a girl. He then picked up a see-through body suit and asked Carroll to model it for him.

That’s a rather forward request, and Trump was presumptuous in making it. Too mild a term? Fine, call him ill-mannered, lascivious or vulgar. But what do you call an educated woman in her late forties who agrees to model see-through underwear for a stranger?

She claims they then went to the fitting room, where Trump pounced and had his wicked way with her. Miss Carroll says she tried to fight Trump off, but in vain. That makes Trump a champion-calibre rapist, for nothing short of such qualification would have enabled him to do the dirty in a cramped fitting room, while keeping his victim silent throughout.

Had she cried out “rape!”, there would have been dozens of people on the typically crowded floor to come to her rescue: sales clerks, store detectives, other customers. Yet Miss Carroll withstood her ordeal in stoical silence, which she then kept for decades.

Why wait so long? It has to be hard to rape a woman without leaving physical evidence, DNA or some other. Presenting such evidence to the police immediately after the fact would have strengthened Miss Carroll’s case no end.

However, she waited 25 years before first crying out in 2019. Usually this sort of thing happens when an alleged rape is perpetrated by a man of modest means who goes on to make a fortune in the ensuing decades. The victim then sees the chance of a lifetime and grabs it, suing her supposed assailant for zillions and typically settling for millions.

Yet Trump was already rich 30 years ago, perhaps even much richer than he is now. So why did she have to wait until his seventies and her eighties to bring her lawsuit? There are so many possibilities, I’m not even going to speculate.

Perhaps Miss Carroll has fallen on hard times in her dotage and urgently needs a cash infusion. Or else she may indeed be politically motivated. Or she has got to hate Trump more over the years. Or… well, I did say I wasn’t going to speculate.

When I first wrote about this case almost a year ago, this is what I said: “If Miss Carroll indeed suffered that crime, my commiserations. Moreover, I wouldn’t put it past Trump to do something like that.”

However, “Whatever we may think about Trump, I do hope American justice has enough residual sanity left to dismiss this case with the contempt it deserves. And if it doesn’t, that’ll be proof positive it’s no longer sane.”

That proof has now been served. American – and not just American – justice isn’t sane when it comes to crimes arousing woke indignation.

That means any woman can get rich by making false accusations (or unprovable ones, which legally should amount to the same thing) against any man rich enough to pay the exorbitant damages. Judges and juries will helpfully comply lest they may be accused of crimes against woke humanity.

In this case, politics may or may not have been a factor. If they had been, that’s something I’d be inclined to see as the lesser evil.