Pay Up, Trump
Trump can’t dodge damages payment. Donald Trump is still on the hook for a $5 million payment to writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting and defaming her in a civil suit against the former and future president.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. (The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, an allegation Carroll also levied at Trump.) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has upheld that judgment.
Trump’s appeal argued that the lower court should not have allowed testimony by two women other than Carroll who say Trump sexually assaulted them and should not have allowed the jury to hear the Access Hollywood video in which Trump made his now infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment.
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings. Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial,” the ruling said.
Trump maintains that the alleged 1996 rape in a Bergdorf Goodman department store never happened and that the case is part of a politicized witch hunt against him. “The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement yesterday.
Carroll was also awarded $83 million in a separate defamation case, this one revolving around comments Trump made about Carroll when he was president. Trump is also appealing that case.
Biden’s last-minute Ukraine cash surge. The Biden administration “is sending nearly $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, as the Biden administration continues to rush military aid to Kyiv in the weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office,” The New York Times reports.
“I’ve directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible, including drawing down older U.S. equipment for Ukraine, rapidly delivering it to the battlefield and then revitalizing the U.S. defense industrial base to modernize and replenish our stockpiles with new weapons,” President Joe Biden said in a Monday statement.
This comes in addition to the $3.4 billion in budget aid to Ukraine that the Treasury Department has just released. Those billions mark “the final disbursement of funds appropriated under the bipartisan Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024.”
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to end the war between Ukraine and Russia—which has now been going on for almost three years—through his purported powers of negotiation. It’s not going well.
While Russia has yet to receive any official proposals from Trump, “we are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine,” said Russian For
Article from Reason.com
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