As the trial in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump got underway last week, the former president took a familiar step: The Republican threw a small tantrum online.
The day before the plaintiff took the witness stand, Trump published some angry missives to his social media platform, condemning Carroll’s allegations as “fraudulent & false” and a “SCAM.”
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan was not pleased, telling one of Trump’s lawyers last week that the former president could be “tampering with a new source of potential liability.” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said he would speak with his client about such communications.
As the trial nears its endpoint — Carroll’s lawyers rested their case yesterday — the defendant’s capacity for restraints appears to be effectively over. As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted, Trump, during a visit to Ireland, launched into another tirade about the case:
“It’s a disgrace that it’s allowed to happen. It’s called false accusations against a rich guy — or in my case, against a famous, rich and political person that’s leading the polls by 40 points. And I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who’s extremely hostile. And I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this. This woman is a disgrace, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in our country.”
It’s the kind of privileged whining that Kaplan apparently hoped not to hear before the trial’s end.
But just as...
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