Trump loses presidential immunity bid in E Jean Carroll suit: Live – The Independent

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Former president pursuing similar immunity defence in federal criminal case concerning attempt to overturn 2020 presidential election loss
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Trump gives away pieces of suit worn in famous mug shot with $4600 collectable cards
Donald Trump cannot assert presidential immunity from a defamation lawsuit by writer E Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape, an appeals court ruled, dealing the former president another legal setback.
The ruling upholds a federal judge’s decision to reject his claim of immunity, finding Mr Trump had waited too long to raise it as a defence. The trial will now go ahead on 16 January 2024.
The former president has pursued a similar immunity defence in his federal criminal case in which he is accused of unlawfully trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court has agreed to a request from special counsel Jack Smith to hear the case on an expedited basis.
These latest legal developments come as Mr Trump’s civil fraud trial is wrapping up in Lower Manhattan while his ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial is underway in Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has unveiled his latest range of digital trading cards on Truth Social, which he is calling the “MugShot Edition” including the notorious booking photograph of him taken at Fulton County jail. Buy all of them and you will also receive a piece of the suit he wore…
Dr Humphreys is still on the stand and moves on to explaining the reputational harm and emotional damage caused by Giuliani’s statements.
She says that prior to 3 December 2020 “there was practically no search traffic for the name Ruby Freeman”, where after that point “there was a dramatic increase over a period of months” with significant spikes in Google trends in December 2020 and January 2021.
Among the most popular search terms were:
– “Ruby Freeman arrested” – “Ruby Freeman fraud” – “Ruby Freeman FBI”
There were hundreds of thousands of like and tens of thousands of comments on Giuliani’s posts about Ms Freeman and Ms Moss — one comment called for their execution on the grounds of treason.
“Their reputation was severely damaged,” Dr Humphreys summarises.
And it did not stop there. Between May and August of 2023 there wre 300,000 mentions of the mother and daughter showing that their reputation is still harmed.
There is “significant, negative and long-lasting impact on the reputations of Ms Freeman and Ms Moss” and they are “widely associated with claims of election fraud”.
In Dr Humphreys’ assessment: “Racist statements and malicious threats of physical violence and incarceration began in 2020 and continue to today.”
Through this she arrived at an estimate of the cost of repairing their reputations which ranges from $17.8m to $47.5m, with the biggest costs attirbuted to cable TV ads, and YouTube and Facebook influencers.
After 44 days across more than three months, witness testimony in a civil trial that could imperil Donald Trump’s real estate empire has concluded.
Final testimony on Wednesday morning closed a key chapter in a lawsuit that strikes at the heart of the former president’s brand-building persona as a successful businessman, a narrative that launched his presidential campaign and is now at the centre of a blockbuster lawsuit alleging a decade of fraud.
But the trial isn’t over just yet.
Lawyers for both parties will file their final briefs to the court by 5 January.
Closing arguments are scheduled for 11 January, and New York County Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron said he plans to issue a final ruling before the end of next month.
Alex Woodward filed this report for The Independent from the New York State Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan.
A ruling is expected by the end of January in a case that threatens the former president’s business empire
Life for Shaye Moss turned upside down after Rudy Giuliani made life hell for her family.
Three years after spreading a lie that the election worker in Georgia manipulated ballots to rig the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s former attorney listened to her in person for the first time as she described the abuse she endured, the pain she lives with, and the overwhelming anxiety she continues to experience.
She testified from the witness stand in a federal courtroom on Tuesday as part of a jury trial that will determine how much Mr Giuliani owes Ms Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman for his defamatory statements in the volatile aftermath of the 2020 election.
He was already found liable for defaming the mother-daughter pair of election workers, whose lives were bombarded with racist threats and harassment fuelled by false claims amplified across social media and right-wing media networks.
Read the rest of the recap of Tuesday’s proceedings
With no redirect or rebuttal for the final witness, Eric Lewis is allowed to step down from the witness stand and departs the room.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise says the defence team will submit another filing for a summary judgement (the fifth? sixth?).
And just like that, testimony wraps after eleven short weeks and a lot of angry Truth Social posts.
Judge Arthur Engoron wishes everyone a happy holiday season and tells both sides he will see them next year for closing arguments, currently scheduled for 11 January 2024.
In addition to the reach of Giuliani’s podcast (see earlier post), Dr Humphreys estimated that a Trump campaign ad on the same date (23 December 2020) generated between 8-18 million impressions online.
Further, the audio and transcript of Donald Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on 2 January 2021 was also a factor in disseminating the defamatory statements against Ms Freeman and Ms Moss.
Through NBC News' YouTube account alone Dr Humphreys estimated it reached a receptive audience of approximately 3.3 million people with a total of 11.75 million receptive impressions across all platforms.
Totalled up, she estimates that the estimated impressions for 91 defamatory statements was between 35-56 million.
Trump attorney Jesus Suarez is digging into Eric Lewis and his credentials, suggesting that he has no accounting experience and reading from bad reviews on his profile on Ratemyprofessors.com.
Suarez: “Are you aware that your students describe you as the worst professor in the Cornell accounting program? ‘Good class if you want to chill and not learn much.’”
The former president’s team filed an objection letter against this witness, claiming that he is “unqualified” and has no experience or education in accounting.
Lewis, however, wrote his doctoral dissertation on “An Examination of the use of Accounting Based Risk Measures for the Valuation of Closely Held Businesses” and he got his MBA in accounting and went to college for finance. He is a Cornell professor in the accounting department.
“How is that practising accounting?” Suarez asked.
Ron DeSantis has blamed Donald Trump for the appearance of a controversial satanic display inside the Iowa state Capitol building.
The Florida governor appeared at a CNN town hall on Tuesday night where he gave some of his sharpest criticism to date of his one-time close ally turned 2024 rival.
At one point, host Jake Tapper asked Mr DeSantis about the display that sprung up in Iowa in recent days.
The governor – who is trailing Mr Trump in the polls – pointed the finger at the former president, saying that the Trump administration gave the Satanic Temple free rein to be regarded as a religion.
Rachel Sharp has the story:
The Satanic Temple Iowa sparked outrage among conservatives after it set up a holiday display inside the state capitol this month
After reaching a plea deal with prosecutors in Georgia, former Trump-connected attorney Kenneth Chesebro has been cooperating with state-level criminal investigations about the so-called “fake elector” plot to keep Trump in office.
Recordings obtained by CNN offer more details about a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office where Chesebro falsely told then-President Trump that he still had a chance to win.
The recordings from his meeting with Michigan prosecutors reveal how he gave Trump false hope that he could overturn the results with a scheme to use Trump loyalists in states he lost to serve as “alternate” electors that could (fraudulently) certify his victory.
“There was a conscious effort to deflect him from a sense of any possibility that he could pull out the election,” Chesebro said, according to the recordings. “Our marching orders were: Don’t say anything that makes him feel more positive than the beginning of the meeting.’”
But he told Trump that “Arizona was still hypothetically possible, because the alternate electors had voted,” he said.
He said he was explaining “that we had until January 6 to win.”
Here’s a little more Trump-bashing from the Florida governor’s CNN town hall last night.
Remember when DeSantis and his fellow challengers were afraid to do this?
Florida governor attacked the former president during a CNN town hall event in Iowa
In a post on his Truth Social, Trump claimed the just overseeing his fraud trial “tried to get me to settle” the case.
His all-caps barrage hours before his trial is expected to close revived familiar attacks against Judge Arthur Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling the case against him a “total hit job”.
He wrote: “WE KEEP ASKING FOR DISMISSAL, BUT THE TRUMP HATER (JUDGE) WON’T LET IT GO. AN INSULT TO AMERICA! HE RULED THAT I WAS A FRAUD BEFORE HE EVEN SAW THE CASE, THEN TRIED TO GET ME TO SETTLE. A TOTAL HIT JOB.”
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Donald Trump speaking to the media in 2018
AP
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