Alina Habba’s latest argument, that E. Jean Carroll failed in her duty to mitigate the damages of then-President Donald Trump’s defamatory statements, shocked one legal expert who called it a “perversion of precedent.”
Lisa Rubin appeared on MSNBC Friday evening to discuss a new filing from Habba in Manhattan's federal court.
In her letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, Habba argues Carroll erred by speaking publicly about Trump’s denial of her claim — upheld in a civil court last year — that he sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
“The harm is attributable to her own conduct in making the initial accusation (through an exclusive in a popular magazine), making numerous media appearances, frequently promoting updates in her lawsuit,” Habba writes.
“President Trump respectfully requests that this Court give the jury an instruction relating to Plaintiff’s obligation to mitigate her damages or minimize the effect of the defamation.”
“It would be perverse if somebody who has been defamed has to stay silent in order to refer damages in future litigation,” she said. “I'm stunned here by the perversion of this precedent.”
The precedent Habba relies on dates back to 1919 and appears also in a Friday night filing from Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, Rubin notes.
While Habba argues Carroll had a duty to mitigate damage, Kaplan states the precedent only protects her client's right to do so.
“Both parties know it,” Rubin said. “But only one cited it correctly.”
Former prosecutor Joyce Vance chimed in to speak not as an expert, but as a personal friend of Carroll’s.
"You don't have to be friends with her for this argument to sting all of us as women," said Vance. “This notion you're supposed to remain quiet.”
Former President Donald Trump is staring down the potential death of his name brand in the civil fraud case against him in New York, said The New York Times' Susanne Craig on MSNBC Friday.
Anchor Alicia Menendez opened the segment with a clip from Trump in a deposition, admitting that he sees his brand as central to his net worth.
"If I wanted to create a [financial] statement that was high, I would have put the brand on it," said Trump in the clip. "You look — I became president because of the brand. Okay? I became president. I think it's the hottest brand in the world. I think my brand value is probably my greatest asset, even though it gets tarnished by people like this suing me. Maybe it gets hotter."
"Donald Trump tipping his hand as to why this case, more than almost any other — and he has a lot of cases to choose from — has gotten under his skin so badly. Why this case seems to be keeping him up at night," said Menendez. "That's because it's a lethal threat to his brand, a brand that as you just heard him say on the record, under oath, he believes got him elected. A truth bomb that is both poignant and potentially legally very powerful."
"I want to ask you about Donald Trump talking about how his brand helped get him elected," Menendez asked Craig. "Why is that important here?"
"Yeah," said Craig. "I have to say, you said something I think off the top, I think he's become a lethal threat to his brand. And I think it's really important to talk about his brand, because when you think about his brand, for years it was a consumer brand, and it was very valuable. I've seen a lot of studies of the Trump name went on a building, it would increase, you know, the price of the building... The hotels are really nice. That's how it was always measured. Experts say now when you think of the Trump brand, it's a political brand. That's not to say there's not worth in it, but once you go down that route, you've got detractors and it becomes something else."
"It was interesting just in some reporting I've been doing, I talked to somebody repeatedly who got a call from the Trump team saying, would you testify in this civil case for us?" said Craig. "And they wanted to have this individual talk about the consumer brand and the value of it. And the person declined because they are no longer tracking it as a consumer brand. So, I would argue for Donald Trump to talk about his brand now, there should be a reset about exactly what it's worth. It's not to say that it doesn't have value, but it is worth a lot less when he was a hot commodity coming out of 'The Apprentice' years in 2004, '05, '06 and '07."
First, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index showed a surge of optimism, as the index rose to the highest level it had seen in nearly three years.
According to the survey, consumers finally seem to be feeling the effects of cooling inflation, which has fallen into the three-percent range after averaging eight percent in 2022, which marked the highest inflation since the early 1980s.
This brightened consumer outlook sent the S&P 500 stock market index to record highs, which Smith could not help but notice while giving her viewers an update on the economy.
"The stock market continues to hit record high after record high," she said. "You're looking at a fresh 300-point gain on the Dow right now, hitting its highs in the session, the S&P 500, which is a snapshot of the broader U.S. stock market, it is hitting an all-time high, surpassing the previous record set two years ago."
"So, wow," Smith continued. "There continues to be a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of optimism in the U.S. stock market. There's still anticipation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut rates this year."
According to a report from NBC News, the deposition was conducted as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' financial fraud investigation. The release of the video clips came almost a year later.
The report has led to the resurfacing of the previously released 479-page transcript that Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan will now want to review, explained the legal analyst.
"That deposition was incredibly damning for him and so too on this are some admissions that can prove damaging to him," she told host Chris Jansing, before noting his bragging about his wealth in the video may be germane to the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial "awarding punitive damages."
Trump has already been found liable of sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her. The ongoing trial is mainly to decide damages.
"This jury is allowed to consider how much Donald Trump is worth," she explained, "because if you're trying to punish someone if they only have $10 in their pocket, that's very different than punishing someone who has hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in their pocket.
"So, if I'm Robby Kaplan and her team representing E. Jean Carroll right now, I'm poring over this video and thinking about how to use it if Donald Trump, indeed, takes the stand on Monday."
After CNN's Kate Bolduan reported on an out-of-the-blue decision by the Los Angeles Innocence Project to represent convicted murderer Scott Peterson in an effort to clear his name in the killing of his wife and unborn son in 2002, CNN legal analyst Jean Casarez took a dim view of spending more money on a case that has been litigated multiple times.
Speaking with the host, attorney Casarez called the move a "shocker" before reminding viewers of the facts of the case.
"When you're a capital defendant everything is paid for, but once the death penalty is overturned he's indigent" she explained. "The Innocence Project, our government dollars from the Department of Justice will pay for this."
"He is claiming actual innocence," she added while shaking her head and continuing, "Now here are some basic facts. It was December of 2002. Laci Peterson, she was eight months pregnant with their unborn child, that's terminology from the California court, Conner. She, on December 24th, Scott Peterson said he left the house about 11:30, she left the house about 9:30, she was going to walk the dog — never any witnesses saw her walk the dog — but he decided to go fishing. Took the fishing boat, he went out, came back to the house, she's gone. She was reported missing. Several months later, that's when her body washed up on shore along with that unborn son, Conner. Obviously, animals are out in the sea, but they washed up separately, close together, but two miles away from where Scott had gone fishing."
"Now, Amber Frey, star witness for the prosecution. She started dating him in November of 2002," she elaborated. "She asked him, 'Are you married?' he said, 'No, I'm not married, my wife died.' One month later is when Laci went missing. She [Frey] immediately went to the police when she heard this: the tapes were part of the criminal trial.
"Now they're saying there is DNA testing never done on this case and this could show his actual innocence. They are asking for a 15.5-inch length of duct tape that was recovered from Laci Peterson's pants when her remains washed up on shore, a 50-inch twine or tape tied in a bow around the neck of Conner, which is curious because she was eight months pregnant when she went missing. A Target bag from the area where her remains are found duct tape from the Target bag, a black tarp that was discovered along the shoreline, and items from a van that was burned in close proximity and time to when she went missing."
As a personal aside she added about the first trial, "I was at the courthouse. There were hundreds — hundreds — of people that went to California just to stand outside of the courthouse because they cared so much."
Nikki Haley, tenuously holding on to her hard-fought second place position in the Republican presidential primary, continues to defend her claim that America "has never been a racist country," which has been her defense after she refused three weeks ago to say "slavery" when asked, “What was the cause of the United States’ Civil War?”
At CNN's town hall at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire Thursday night, Haley cemented position: America is not and has never been a racist country, it was not founded on racism, nor was the intent of the founders to create a racist nation.
CNN's Jake Tapper challenged her whitewashing of American history.
"Just to push back because I was a history major. In New Hampshire," Tapper told the former Trump UN Ambassador and South Carolina Republican governor. "You're talking about the ideals of America. But America was founded institutionally on many racist precepts, including slavery."
"But when you look, it said 'all men are created equal,'" the former ambassador told Tapper, referring to America's Declaration of Independence.
The Biden re-election campaign was quick to post that short clip online.
That was just one small part of Haley defending her position.
Reminding Haley that she had said, "America has never been a racist country," Tapper countered by explaining, as Mediaite reported, "Protections for the institution of slavery were written into the U.S. Constitution. The White House was built with slave labor. Your home state of South Carolina seceded from the Union, fought a war to defend the enslavement of Black people. I understand you don’t think America is racist country now, but we’re here at a college. Do you really think, as a historical matter, America has never been a racist country?"
Attempting to defend her position, Haley replied, "I mean, think about – first of all, I will tell you, when you look at, you know, the Declaration of Independence, it was that, you know, 'men are created equal,' with unalienable rights, right?" she said, leaving out the "all."
"That was what we all knew. But what I look at it as is, I was a brown girl that grew up in a small, rural town. We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with. But my parents never said we lived in a racist country, and I’m so thankful they didn’t. Because for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live or [were] born in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance. And my parents would always say, you may have challenges. And yes, there will be people who are racist, but that doesn’t define what you can do in this country."
"And so I think it’s important that we tell all kids that, look, America is not perfect. We have our stains. We know that. But our goal should always be to make today better than yesterday. It’s hugely important. And that’s the problem I have is, we have too many people with this national self-loathing. It is killing our country. We have got to go back to loving America. We are blessed, because that little brown girl in that small rural town in South Carolina? She grew up to become the first female, minority governor in history. She then went on to be UN Ambassador, and now she’s running for president of the United States."
She continued, saying, "I want every brown and Black child to see that and say, 'no, I don’t live in a country that was formed on racism. I live in a country where they wanted all people to be equal and to make sure that they have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"
The town hall audience applauded.
That's when Tapper again challenged her whitewashing of U.S. history.
Undeterred, Haley stuck to her position.
"But when you look, it said 'all men are created equal.' I think the intent, the intent was to do the right thing. Now, did they have to go fix it along the way? Yes. But I don’t think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country. The intent was everybody was going to be created equally. And as we went through time, they fixed the things that were not 'all men are created equal.' They made sure women became equal too, all of these things happened over time."
And she continued, referring to racism as just a part of "our little kinks."
"I refuse to believe that the premise of when they formed our country was based on the fact that it was a racist country to start with," Haley told Tapper. "I refuse to believe that. I have to know, in my heart and in everybody’s heart that we live in the best country in the world, and we are a work in progress, and we’ve got a long way to go to fix all of our little kinks. But I truly believe our founding fathers had the best of intentions when they started, and we fixed it along the way, and we should always look at it that way."
Appearing early Friday with MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance was asked about Donald Trump's latest claim about why U.S. president's need total immunity — and she responded that his bid to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. is doomed.
As she told the host, Trump's case before the court contains a "fatal flaw."
"The Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia will make the legal decision based on the court record, they won't look at any of these extraneous comments Trump is making, but it's quite a closing argument to the voters of New Hampshire, right?" Vance began before joking, "'Vote for me because I'm guilty' is what we seem to be hearing, and when you think about the force of that argument — what Trump is saying is that any president should be able to do anything whether it's legal or not — and of course that's not how our rule of law system works."
"His argument that presidents will always have to look over their shoulder has a fatal flaw which is that he's the only president to ever face indictment," she explained.
"So when the court of appeals evaluates these arguments, they'll appreciate those real word aspects to the decision that they're making, and the legal doctrine very simply is not that presidents are above the law."
"I don't think the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia will have any difficulty rejecting Trump's arguments," she added, "And whether the Supreme Court takes it up and decides to let that decision stand. It can't be the state of the law in this country that presidents are free to commit crimes for the simple reason that would let Joe Biden, for instance, do anything that he wanted today to remain in office."
Reacting to Donald Trump's Fox News interview on Thursday night where MSNBC labeled the former president as "dazed and confused," host Jonathan Lemire pointed out he has been covering the real estate magnate turned politician for decades and noted his decline is alarming.
After "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarbrough prompted Lemire by stating, "I think it is going to be harder and harder for the campaign to manage this guy, and in just my opinion, he looks like he's in a serious state of decline and seriously is so confused," the "Way Too Early" host jumped in.
"When I was a Metro reporter with the New York Daily News, we covered Trump from time to time 15, 20 years ago," Lemire recalled. " It's very clear he's not the same guy he was then and that post about presidential immunity also had the great Trump tell of this era, which is when he goes to all-caps."
'When he goes to all-caps, and it is an all-caps screed, particularly about his legal predicaments, you know it is a window into how upset and anxious he is," he elaborated. "And that was the night where he was posting overnight repeatedly about E. Jean Carroll and other, quote, 'witchhunts' and then yesterday morning went so far as to say this, 'needing full immunity for even events that cross the line.'"
"This is something that feels like not only, of course, a scary projection of what could come in a second Trump term where he would say, 'I could do whatever I want and can't be prosecuted,'" he added.
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski was disgusted by Donald Trump attorney Alina Habba's cross examination of E. Jean Carroll.
Trump has already been found liable in a previous trial for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, the longtime author and columnist, but Habba suggested in her questioning that she had accused the former president of raping her decades ago in a bid for fame.
"E. Jean Carroll returned to the witness stand for the third day of the defamation trial against Donald Trump, although Trump was not in court due to his mother-in-law's funeral," Brzezinski said. "His presence was certainly felt in the form of a video played for the jury. Carroll's attorney played a clip from Trump's remarks at a press conference on Wednesday, attempting to show how the former president continues to defame Carroll. During cross-examination, Trump attorney Alina Habba questioned Carroll about her current income from her blog and seems to attribute Carroll's increase in earnings to the, quote, 'fame' that she has received because of her connection to Trump."
"Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough agreed, saying the broader fame that Habba claims the 80-year-old author achieved came as the result of being sexually assaulted by the reality TV star-turned-president.
"You mean fame because she got raped by Trump, according to the judge," Scarborough said.
"Added twist, from a female attorney," Brzezinski said. "Carroll admitted she is more well-known after writing about the abuse, but added she is also hated by a lot more people. The former president is expected to be back in court when the trial resumes on Monday, where he may or may not take the stand."
"Through this trial, you really are reminded what a vile, disgusting person Donald Trump is," she added. "You watch the deposition with E. Jean Carroll's attorney and how vile and disgusting he is in that deposition – what he thinks about women, how he views them as sort of objects, sex toys, literally so unbelievably misogynistic and rude, that you wouldn't have this person at your dinner table. You would not let your kids act this way, you would not want anybody in your life to act this way. Yet, it's unbelievable, so many people still support him."
On Friday morning's "Morning Joe," regular MSNBC contributor and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson laughed his way through trying to describe Donald Trump's Fox News interview on Thursday night with personality Sean Hannity.
Moments after MSNBC co-host Joe Scarborough observed that the former president did not "look well" during the interview and has been "shuffling around," Robinson began laughing as MSNBC displayed a chyron reading: "Dazed and Confused: Trump mixes up Biden with Obama, again."
As Robinson told the MSNBC panel, Hannity was forced to try and keep the former president on track and on topic and it was painful to watch.
"Poor Sean Hannity," he joked. "I don't often feel sorry for Sean Hannity, but I did because he had just absolutely teed up the ball, and Donald Trump, you know, hits the lamp on the table or whatever. It's just ridiculous. What more can he do?"
"You know, the thing about Donald Trump, of course, is that he is pure id in the Freudian sense," he elaborated. "He blurts out whatever is on his mind, so you know what's on his mind is trying to stay out of jail. You can tell from the recent appearances how worried he is that he is going to go to jail; he is going to have to pay massive, massive fines in all these various cases."
"Who knows how much he'll have to pay to E. Jean Carroll?" he asked. "He's going to have consequences for his actions, not just over his presidency, over his long life in which he crosses the line all the time. He is all about crossing the line. He is so worried that he's going to have to go to jail, that this is what he is thinking about more than he is thinking about the campaign. More than anything else he wants to stay out of jail."
Donald Trump insists presidents enjoy "complete and total immunity" – even when they "cross the line" – but a legal expert said that argument won't get him far in court.
The quadruple-indicted former president compared himself to a "rogue cop" in a Thursday morning post on Truth Social, saying that Americans must simply "live with" wrongdoing by chief executives, but MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann doesn't believe any court will be persuaded by those claims.
"I think there is no question they're going to rule against Donald Trump, and I don't think that his recent tweet, to the extent that it comes to their attention, is going to help," Weissmann said. "In terms of Donald Trump's strategy of saying something that outlandish, it really does not help in terms of the court looking and realizing what they're being asked to do is going to be acted on by this man, so, strategically, it is a terrible idea. I think there's no way on God's green earth that this panel is going to find that he is immune from criminal prosecution. That has never been the law, and it is not going to be the law."
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is expected to rule as soon as Friday on the issue brought by the former president to evade prosecution in the federal election interference case, but Weissmann strongly doubts they will decide in Trump's favor.
"I don't think that the courts are going to grant immunity," Weissmann said. "But just remember, Donald Trump becomes president, he will use his pardon power to, in effect, do what he is saying he would do if he can't get the courts to give him total immunity, which is that he can use the pardon power to pardon people who commit crimes, including crimes for him, as he has said with respect to the Jan. 6 people who he is now terming that they were hostages and not actually criminal defendants. So it's worth keeping an eye out for how other powers that he could have if he becomes president will be used in a way that gets him to the same end result."
After reading Trump's Thursday Truth Social post where he said that he deserved complete immunity even if he "crossed the line" into illegal behavior, host Phil Mattingly suggested that Trump was telegraphing that he was "going to do some criming" if reelected.
He then turned to panelist Errol Louis, who outlined the dark implications of Trump's argument.
"It's a pretty straightforward statement of what dictatorship is, right? he said. "A president -- in his case he is talking about himself -- should be able to, must be able to legally do with legal impunity do whatever it is he or she wants."
Louis said that the statement should "sound a sense of alarm" given that "you cannot have a major party candidate saying at the top of his lungs... the president can do whatever he wants."
Former Republican pollster Lee Carter, who frequently tries to spin Trump's outlandish statements in his favor, acknowledged that "I can't really defend he should be able to do anything, and I understand that's playing right into the dictator argument."
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy(R-TX), one of the de facto leaders of the far-right Freedom Caucus, expressed outrage Thursday afternoon as the House debated a spending bill required to keep the government running and avoid a shutdown Friday at midnight.
Blasting Republicans and Democrats voting for the legislation, Roy lamented agencies and individuals he opposes that will also receive funding should the bill pass as expected. (The bill did pass.)
"They're gonna vote to continue to fund the radical progressive policies embedded in it. Continue to fund the bureaucracy that's at war with the American people. Continue to fund open borders. Continue to fund Alejandro Mayorkas, even as we attempt to impeach him in the Homeland Security Committee. We're going to fund him. We're going to fund those open borders. We're going to fund the United Nations. We're going to fund the World Health Organization. We're going to fund UNRWA to give money to the Palestinians that gets to Hamas. And we're gonna go campaign against those things, but we're gonna fund them."
"It is Groundhog Day in the House chamber all the time, every day," he added.
Roy, who was among the first to float the idea of removing Republicans' latest Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, on Thursday announced, "It does not matter who is sitting in the Speaker's seat or who has the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff."
Rep. Roy (R-TX): It doesn't matter who is sitting in the speaker's seat or who has the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff. pic.twitter.com/7VOhkRJeyd
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 18, 2024
Congressman Roy, a self-professed chaos supporter and a former chief of staff to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), made national headlines – and some enemies on the right – when he brought his anger to the House floor late last year, berating his colleagues and admitting they had accomplished nothing all year – and had nothing to campaign on.
“One thing!” the angry congressman from Texas shouted. “I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. One! Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, ‘Well, I guess it’s not as bad as the Democrats.'”
Congressman Roy called it “offensive” – not that companies were dramatically raising prices on life-saving drugs they sell in other countries for a fraction of the cost, but over Americans criticizing the drug manufacturers for making exorbitant profits while people are literally dying because they can’t afford the high cost of their prescriptions.
“I hope you make a lot of money!” Roy declared, waving his hand in the air.
Rep. Chip Roy’s meltdown about profit is wild. Just wild. Never seen anything like it. pic.twitter.com/FrSKTzWGE0
— Jason Rosenberg (@mynameisjro) May 16, 2019
That same year he was one of just seven Republicans to vote against naming a U.S. Post Office after Democratic U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, who served in Congress for 31 years, literally until the day of her death.
