News of the Weakend: Trump Derangement Syndrome

Trump's rape trial defense? His accuser and her friends have Trump Derangement Syndrome

This week, lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who says Donald Trump raped her in the spring of 1996, rested their case in the battery and defamation trial that has gripped a lower Manhattan federal courtroom for seven days.

Over the course of the trial, jurors heard searing testimony from Carroll herself, as well as the accounts of two friends whom she confided in shortly after the alleged rape and two other sexual assault accusers who say their experiences with Trump resembled Carroll's. The only appearance Trump made came in the form of a deposition video where the former president disparages Carroll.

Just moments later, Trump's lawyers rested their case as well, without presenting any evidence.

Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina said from the start that the former president's legal team wouldn't bring any witnesses in front of the jury. The entire case, he told jurors in his opening statement, would come out in the cross-examination of Carroll and the witnesses her lawyers put on the stand.

With the testimony concluding on Thursday, and closing arguments to begin on Monday — unless Trump makes a surprise personal appearance — we now know what that defense looks like.

Carroll and her friends, Trump's lawyers suggest, all have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Trump denies raping Carroll. And while her allegations have provoked his fury, he hasn't deigned to show up to the trial happening now in Manhattan federal court.

Carroll's lawsuit seeks to hold Trump liable of battery for allegedly raping her in a dressing room of the lingerie section of Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman department store in the spring of 1996, as well as for defaming her after she went public with her story decades later, in 2019. She testified that she confided separately with two friends, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin, shortly after the alleged attack.

According to Trump's lawyers, the whole lawsuit is a conspiracy schemed up by ardent Trump critic George Conway. No one else was there to witness the alleged attack. Carroll herself is a feminist journalist and longtime supporter of Democrats, and the only corroboration presented in court is testimony from her two close friends, who are also Democrats. The whole thing is too convenient, Trump's lawyers say. The alleged plot, they say, has made Carroll an icon of the #Resistance and was motivated by her desire to sell more books.

"E. Jean Carroll, Lisa Birnbach, and Carol Martin hated Donald Trump, loathed Donald Trump politically, not because anyone got raped, but just politically they hated him," Tacopina told jurors in his opening statement.

Carroll and her friends did not like Trump's politics, to put it mildly

The diagnosis of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" came into vogue during the 2016 election, as Trump's defenders — or at least critics of his opponents — tried to paint liberals as obsessing and overreacting to his many controversies.

Carroll, Birnbach, and Martin also happened to be journalists — or as Trump likes to call them, "enemies of the people" who can't be trusted. Birnbach and Natasha Stoynoff, another woman who accused Trump of rape and who testified in the trial, even wrote magazine articles about Trump's personal life in the years that he was a tabloid fixture. Jessica Leeds, yet another accuser who testified in the case, said she consistently voted for Democrats in major elections.

After Trump became a presidential candidate in 2015, and in 2016, Birnbach was a prolific podcaster and occasional radio show and cable news guest.

During cross-examination, Trump's lawyer brought up some pointed comments she made about the now-former president.

Did she call him a "narcissistic sociopath"? "That sounds right," Birnbach answered. What about "Vladimir Putin's asset," a "slimeball," "cult" leader, "delusional," and "an infection like herpes that we can't get rid of"?

"I'm not a fan," Birnbach said on the stand.

Trump's attorney pointed out that Birnbach had said Trump and his allies had symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Birnbach previously said she thought about Trump "every hour, every day that I'm awake, and unfortunately when I sleep."

"The guy had done a lot of bad things and I was hoping that there would be — at some point he would have to account for them," Birnbach said.

A plot against Trump — or a stuffed squirrel?

Martin did not have anything nice to say about Trump, either. In emails and text messages, she said Trump was "demonic" and "spreading his stank" over the country, and made jokes about an uncorroborated claim that Trump enjoyed women urinating on him. She called Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner "two junior grifters sashaying into meetings with world leaders."

In a 2017 email shown at trial, Martin called Trump "Orange Crush" and made a reference to meeting up with Carroll to "scheme," saying "we must both do our patriotic duty." Carroll responded with "TOTALLY!!! I have something special for you when we meet."

Asked about that email by Tacopina, Martin testified she believed "scheme" was a reference to supporting Democratic party causes, and the "something special" Carroll promised was a stuffed squirrel that was a gift for her granddaughter.

But even Martin seemed — at least for a brief time — ambivalent about Carroll's intentions behind the lawsuit. 

In another message, later on, she told her daughter she believed Carroll was "acting a little scary" and "in too deep," yet "loving the adulation." Tacopina suggested Carroll enjoyed the attention her accusations against Trump brought her.

"It's gone to another level and not something I can relate to," Martin said. "For her sadly, I think this quest has become a lifestyle."

In none of the unfavorable descriptions of Trump, Tacopina pointed out, did Martin describe him as "a rapist."

"You can't beat up on me for not screaming"

Trump's lawyers have taken pains to note that, while Carroll hated Trump, she went public with her story through a book and magazine article, not a call to the police. She also didn't scream or cry while Trump allegedly raped her, Tacopina noted.

Michelle Simpson Tuegel, an attorney who's represented hundreds of sexual violence victims, including the victims of Olympic gymnast coach Larry Nassar, says the "victim blaming" approach could backfire with the jury. There is no "normal response" to getting raped, she said.

"She didn't scream, or she didn't report, or motivations that they've tried to argue or underlying her reporting — it's offensive," Simpson Tuegel said.

Or, as Carroll said in one particularly testy exchange with Tacopina: "You can't beat up on me for not screaming."

Birnbach and Martin both testified that they decided to come forward under oath voluntarily not because they were part of some conspiracy, but to support their cherished friend. The two said they kept Carroll's rape allegations against Trump a secret because she asked them to. Neither would lie to "stop the Trump train," they said.

"I am here because my friend — my good friend who is a good person — told me something terrible that happened to her, and as a result she lost her employment and her life became very, very difficult," Birnbach testified. "I am here because I am her friend and I want the world to know that she was telling the truth."

Carroll is well-connected in the #Resistance

Carroll's own politics were a focal point in her testimony. In a moment that made US District Judge Lewis Kaplan stifle laughs, Carroll talked about how she jokingly suggested in one of her books that all men should be rounded up, brought to Montana, and "retrained." Tacopina also pressed her about her votes for Democrats, and her comments that Trump could get bogged down by investigations.

"Ms. Carroll has said that if Donald Trump has to deal with so many lawsuits, he won't be able to run for office," Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina said in his opening statement last week. "And here we are."

Tacopina brought up emails where Carroll referenced friendships with a murderer's row of MSNBC fixtures. In her emails to friends, Carroll talks about hanging out with Mary Trump, columnists Molly Jong-Fast and Margaret Sullivan, and legal and political commentators Joyce Vance, Katie Phang, and Jen Taub. Carroll discussed planning to hold a sort of listening party for one of her own court hearings, where the group would dial in from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg conference room in the Empire State Building.

By Trump's attorneys lights, this made Carroll a part of the #Resistance: the big-tent political movement that sought to stop Trump. It was through these anti-Trump circles that Carroll met George Conway, a Republican lawyer who despised Trump and was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one his chief advisors. At a party hosted by Jong-Fast, Conway told Carroll about how she could pursue civil litigation against Trump.

Two days later, at Conway's recommendation, Carroll met with Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), who is herself a prominent feminist lawyer and has a separate pending lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization. Trump attacked Kaplan during the deposition he took for the case.

"She's accusing me of rape — of raping her. It's not true," he snarled. "An you know it's not true, too — you're a political operative. You're a disgrace."

That claim — that Carroll is a politically motivated liar — is precisely the thing that Carroll is suing him over by bringing a defamation lawsuit. The subject has become a sticking point for Trump's lawyers in their questions. Why sue Trump and not, say, former CBS CEO Les Moonves, who Carroll also accused of rape? (Moonves has denied the allegation.)

"Donald Trump called me a liar, said I was pulling a scam, said I was running a con, that I was a Democratic operative, that I had accused other men of rape, that I was in it for the money, that I was in it for the attention," Carroll said on the stand. "And Les Moonves stayed quiet."

Will any of this play well with a jury? Probably not, Simpson Tuegel said.

"It's hard for me to imagine that someone would be willing to be under that level of public scrutiny, and being under such a painstaking microscope, and to relive the worst moments of their life, for political reasons," she said. "The recent narrative regarding this trial being a liberal scheme is offensive not just to the women in this case, but to all survivors of sexual assault who are impacted regardless of your politics."

Carroll herself has said she likes being in the spotlight. But not as a rape victim.

"I like attention. There is no question, I like attention," she said in response to Tacopina's questions. "I don't particularly like attention because I'm suing Donald Trump. Getting attention for being raped — it's hard. Getting attention for making a great three-bean salad — that would be good."

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trial-carrolldefense-accusers-have-trump-derangement-syndrome-2023-5