Donald Trump has only one strategy that he always employs, and in this case it did not serve him well. I’m talking about the E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump case, the combination sexual assault and defamation case, where Carroll alleged that he sexually assaulted her in early 1996. 

Trump denied the allegations and lied about her, prompting Carroll to sue him for defamation, which case she won. After Trump continued to lie about her after the first verdict, she filed a second defamation case, and she has now one that one as well. A jury deliberated for only three hours and awarded Carroll $7.3 million in emotional damages, $11 million in reputation-related damages, and $65 million in punitive damages.

That totals $83.3 million.

Wow.

Trump has repeatedly claimed — and continues to claim — that he never met her, even though there was a photograph put into evidence of the two of them together back in the 1990s, and he initially misidentified her in a deposition as being his ex-wife Marla Maples, while maintaining that she was “not his type.”

Wow.

Trump only has one strategy — the one he inherited from Roy Cohn — which is to double down, again and again, on whatever lie he has asserted. That strategy has worked frequently for the Donald — plenty of litigants have just given up instead of having to go 15 rounds with him — but it did not work for him today. 

Trump went the route of jury nullification — which is when a jury returns a verdict which is contrary to the weight of the evidence because of their feelings about the litigants or their disagreement with the law — and that also did not work for him today. 

Part of the reason that the punitive damages were so high in this verdict is because Trump just cannot stop defaming Carroll. He defames her constantly in his speeches and political pronouncements, and we’ll probably find out that he will have defamed her again over the weekend.

Then she can sue him a third time.

Trump has maintained in his various depositions that his “brand” is with $10 billion — unlikely though that may be — and so it looks like the jury was wanting to get his attention and actually take a bite out of his fortune. 

Donald Trump is, of course, the world’s worst legal client by a country mile. Part of the reason he has had so many attorneys. He never listens to his attorney’s advice. I’m sure they’ve told him to stop talking about Carroll — but with the impulse control of a gnat — I can’t quite imagine that he will take their advice.