According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, Joe Tacopina, who is representing former President Donald Trump, isn’t making any “progress” during his cross-examination of E. Jean Carroll in her defamation case against him.
Trump is being sued by Carroll, a former Elle columnist, on the grounds that he insulted her appearance and defamed her character when he denied sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York City in the mid-1990s. Carroll’s civil lawsuit claims that the former president forcibly groped her and then raped her.
On The Katie Phang Show on MSNBC on Saturday, Vance explained: “Tacopina, frankly, from what we’ve been able to see, he doesn’t really seem to touch Carroll.” She’s a very determined and fierce witness. Her story is consistent, and there are no real inroads that he makes there. “But he falls into this other trap that defense lawyers have to be wary of in a sexual assault case,” Vance said. “By going on the attack against Carroll, he runs the risk of making her credibility stronger, of putting the jury on her side and willing to listen to her testimony, and that looks to be how this trial is going at this moment.”
On Wednesday, Carroll took the witness stand and outlined the alleged assault in graphic detail. She testified in court that she confided in two friends and received different recommendations, including the following: call the police or not, since Trump would damage her reputation given his wealth. Carroll did not report the incident to the police or initiate a lawsuit until 2019, when she filed a lawsuit against him for defamation. Due to the “New York Adult Survivors Act,” which permits victims to file a lawsuit during a 1-year window even if the statute of limitations has passed, Carroll added a battery charge to the lawsuit last November.
Carroll’s inability to engage in romantic relationships or sexual activity after the alleged rape was also made known to the jury.