| | | Digested week: the world learns the cost of keeping Donald Trump’s mouth shut
Emma Brockes
Damages of $83.3m for repeatedly libelling E Jean Carroll have actually silenced former president – for now
Fri 2 Feb 2024 06.02 EST
How much money would it take to stop you saying something out loud that you really wanted to say? The question is moot for most of us, but for Donald Trump it is, we know, a tried and tested principle, the answer to which lies somewhere north of $5m and south – on the evidence of the weekend – of $83.3m. That is the combined amount of compensatory and punitive damages sanctioned against the former president by a jury in New York on Friday, for repeatedly libelling E Jean Carroll, including one instance last year when he libelled her on live television the day after losing the first libel case, with its $5m verdict.
Clearly, the figure wasn’t high enough to make him think before opening his mouth. In the days after this latest judgment, while Trump ranted on Truth Social – “our Legal System,” he wrote, “is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon” – it is telling that nowhere has he mentioned Carroll by name or repeated the insults that got him here in the first place. He’s still Trump, of course, a man who muttered so disruptively throughout the trial that the judge himself observed: “You just can’t control yourself.” But for now, at least, he is silent.
Digested week: the world learns the cost of keeping Donald Trump’s mouth shut | Emma Brockes | The Guardian |
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