Politics
Why Trump showed up in court for his appeal of E. Jean Carroll’s trial win
On Thursday, Judge Asks Chutkan held a status conference in Washington, D.C., to discuss how Donald Trump’s federal election interference case — which carries four felony charges against the former president — should progress and how fast. Trump himself, however, was nowhere to be found.
Fast forward 24 hours to an ornate, immaculate courtroom in Manhattan’s federal appeals court, where a three-judge panel heard oral argument on Trump’s appeal of E. Jean Carroll’s first civil trial verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Yet after skipping the entirety of the first Carroll trial and despite not being obligated to attend, Trump showed up for the argument.
With four of his lawyers already seated at their assigned table, Trump entered slowly, flanked only by four Secret Service agents and trailed by two of his most loyal legal and political advisers, Alina Habba and Boris Epshteyn. The Republican presidential nominee wore his classic business formal outfit: dark suit, white shirt, and a long, shiny red tie.
The Carroll case, on the other hand, plays right into the twin pillars of Trump’s messaging: martyrdom and misogyny.
And before the argument began, Trump did two notable — and chilling — acts. First, while still standing, he wheeled around and surveyed the gallery of assembled press and members of the public. Eyes narrowed, he glowered in an echo of trial days past. Then, taking his seat at the head of a table immediately behind his legal team, he turned to his right, seeming to appraise a tall blonde seated at a table directly across the room. But Carroll, in a nipped-waist skirt suit with her hair tied back with a girlish, satiny bow, stared straight ahead, just as she had for nearly all of her two trials.
Thus, even before the judges arrived, the scene was riveting. But a more fundamental question remains: Why did Trump come to court at all, especially given that this case involves his smallest outstanding liability and civil litigants are never required to appear?
Let me posit a few potential reasons.
First, should Trump win the November election, many legal experts assume he will either order his Department of Justice to withdraw the two federal cases against him and/or direct the attorney general to fire special counsel Jack Smith. But as president, he would have no ability to expunge any civil liabilities or halt his civil cases. Put another way, while a president could arguably pardon himself or end any criminal cases against him, Trump simply cannot campaign his way out of any of the civil judgments against him.
Still, the first Carroll trial, which dealt with statements Trump made in fall 2022yielded a $5 million award for Carroll. That’s a gargantuan sum to most of us. But even assuming Trump’s self-proclaimed net worth is exaggeratedthat’s likely pocket change to him. So why would he care? Because although Friday’s argument was technically limited to evidentiary issues at the first trial, it could also impact the much larger, $83.3 million verdict in the second trial, which concerned Trump’s June 2019 statements.
Last year, the trial judge overseeing both Carroll cases, Lewis Kaplan, determined that the first trial verdict established that Trump’s substantively “identical” 2019 statements were also defamatory and, therefore, Trump’s liability had already been adjudicated. All that was left for the second jury, Kaplan ruled, was to decide Carroll’s damages. The flip side of Kaplan’s decision, however, is that if the appeals court overturns the first verdict, it would necessarily destroy the second. And it could have been that hope — specifically, the hope of erasing nearly $90 million owed to Carroll — that brought Trump to watch the appeal.
Yet my guess is that his wallet wasn’t the only or even primary reason Trump cared enough to visit yet another courtroom. Rather, it was his supporters’ wallets that prompted Trump to go to court and then hold court at Trump Tower for nearly an hour.
Trump and his campaign advisers well understand the perverse relationship between his perceived victimization through the civil and criminal cases against himon the one hand, and his popularity among his base, on the other. And they recognize that Trump’s fundraising peaks when he is — or simply portrays himself to be — in serious legal peril.
For example, according to PoliticoTrump’s best online fundraiser day of the first quarter of the year — and his third best overall since launching his presidential campaign in November 2022 — came on the same day that New York Attorney General Letitia James “took initial steps toward seizing his assets in the event he failed to make bond” in her civil fraud case, where she won a $450 million-plus verdict.
Similarly, The Associated Press reported that of Trump’s $141 million fundraising haul in May, more than a third came from online contributions in the 24 hours after a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony fraud counts in his New York hush money case. But by August — shortly after the Supreme Court handed Trump a huge victory through its presidential immunity decision and while virtually all of Trump’s cases were quiet, if not dormant — Trump’s fundraising total fell below May levels while Vice President Kamala Harris raised $361 million, nearly tripling Trump for the month.
The Carroll case, on the other hand, plays right into the twin pillars of Trump’s messaging: martyrdom and misogyny. Put another way, Trump stewed silently during court so he could unleash his grievances after, all with the goal of filling his campaign coffer and pushing back on Harris’ “prosecutor versus sexual abuser” framing.
After all, sometimes you can only win by losing. And Trump knows that well.
Lisa Rubin is an BLN legal correspondent and a former litigator. Previously, she was the off-air legal analyst for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
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Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
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