After just 3 hours, the jury awarded E. Jean Carroll 83.3 million dollars in her defamation law suit against Donald Trump. Trump claims that this outcome is just one part of a broader witch hunt being waged against him by Biden through a weaponized Department of Justice. Clearly there must be some truth in Trump’s accusation: how can such a monumental decision be made in such a short period of time if it were not pre-ordained? 1
To put Trump’s accusation in context and fully appreciate the implications, we need to keep in mind all the moving parts involved in orchestrating such an outcome. First, the case was heard in a court of law, which is governed by the third branch of the government — not the executive branch, not the congress — and the plaintiff was represented by private legal representatives, not lawyers from the DOJ. The jury of five men and four women was made up of people from the public, whose appointment was agreed to by the legal council of both sides.
But E Jean Carroll’s is just one case in the broader hunt including other civil trials as well as four criminal indictments, with 91 felony charges in all. Each of these cases involves their own collection of juries, lawyers, and courts. This is not your simple, every-day witch hunt. This is a massive mobilization of people, processes and agencies.
To organize and then successfully execute such a public-private partnership, that crosses branches of government, and swaying individual from the general public, requires some real know-how.
And yet Trump wants us to believe that Joe Biden is behind all of this; he is the mastermind of this grand scheme. If it is true that Biden has organized all of this, then I need to reassess my opinion that he is old, frail, and in mental decline.
- Published in Letters to the Editor in the Toronto Star January 31, 2024 “If Biden orchestrated Trump’s predicament, there’s no way he is feeble-minded” ↩︎
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