There are a whole lot of pundits out there, but there are a few who stand above the rest because they’re truly smart. I listen carefully for instance when George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley speaks, because he’s usually right on the money.
Another commentator who is always spot on is Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist, military historian, farmer, and political commentator, so I was very curious to see what he had to say about the $83.3 million awarded to columnist E. Jean Carroll in her defamation trial against former President Donald Trump. I had written that I thought the whole thing was absolutely ludicrous and wondered if Hanson would agree.
See:
Livid Trump Vows to Appeal E. Jean Carroll Verdict, 'There Is No Longer Justice in America'
I was not disappointed. Hanson shredded the sham trial in an op-ed Friday, saying that this would have never happened – and nor would many of the other pending legal actions against the former president – were he not running for the top job again and threatening the progressive worldview.
He started by talking about the former president storming out of the courtroom Friday:
The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing — and angered — a left-wing claimant, a quite hostile left-wing judge, and a left-wing New York jury.
The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional left-wing criminal prosecutions, left-wing judges, and left-wing juries to come — all on charges that would have never been filed if Trump had either not run for president or been a liberal progressive.
Of all the litigation against Trump, Hanson says the E. Jean Carroll case is the craziest. Carroll's allegations just don't make sense:
The E. Jean Carroll case is the most baffling of all five. She, the alleged victim, did not remember even the year in which the purported sexual assault took place, nearly three decades ago. Observers have pointed out dozens of bizarre inconsistencies in her story, some of them seemingly exculpatory of Trump.
It was never clear what the preliminaries were that supposedly (Trump denies meeting her) led both, allegedly, willingly to retreat together to a department store dressing room, where during normal business hours, the alleged assault took place.
Moreover, the sexual assault complaint came forward decades post facto — and only after Trump was running for and then became president.
Hanson concludes that Trump will have to keep a level head because these dubious lawfare attacks are going to continue throughout the campaign, and that they are much more serious than even the phony Russia Collusion allegations:
We are way beyond all that. The legal system itself, hand-in-glove with left-wing politicos (compare campaign boasts of [New York Attorney General Letitia James] and [Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani] Willis or prosecutorial visits to the January 6 committee and the White House), is turning the process of balloting and elections into an embarrassing farce.
Still, Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.
In my previous article about the staggering verdict, I argued that the whole thing reminded me of the Brett Kavanaugh saga, where we were supposed to blindly believe a woman who had few facts, zero evidence, no eyewitnesses, and contradicted herself numerous times. Although this trial was about defamation, and Carroll chose not to pursue charges of sexual abuse or rape, I don't understand how you can convict Trump of defamation for declaring his innocence.
Moreover, the massive award makes no sense – even if you believe he defamed her, how is that worth $83 million plus?
It's truly scary the lengths they're willing to go to in warping our legal system just to stop one man. It's one of the major reasons Trump is cruising so far in the race for GOP nomination – people are sick of this dirty pool.
Hanson is right – the whole thing is an embarrassing farce.
Read the whole op-ed here:
83 million?
— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) January 27, 2024
Donald Trump in furor stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while, in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million! The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by…
See also:
Three Blind Mice: Victor Davis Hanson Scorches Disgraced University Presidents
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