Four years ago, when former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll first publicly claimed that Donald Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room, she was not sure of the exact date or even the year when that happened. Her account, which described an assault that she said she had suffered more than two decades before, was not supported by direct evidence, eyewitnesses, or a police report. Yesterday a federal jury in Manhattan nevertheless accepted the gist of her accusation, although its $5 million judgment against Trump was based on sexual abuse rather than rape, plus the conclusion that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar.
Trump's defenders dismissed the verdict as plainly irrational and politically motivated, suggesting that a fair assessment of Carroll's claims was more than could be expected in a city that overwhelmingly favored Trump's opponents in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. "In New York you can't get a fair trial," Trump's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, complained. But there are several explanations for the outcome that do not hinge on assuming the jurors were so biased against Trump that they were determined to side with Carroll, regardless of what the evidence showed.
