Dormer President Donald Trump blasted his own legal team following an appeals court appearance in Manhattan as Trump attempted to get a new trial after a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming author E. Jean Carroll.
Both Caroll and Trump were present for Friday’s oral arguments at the hearing. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages at her trial.
Speaking to reporters after his court appearance, Trump called out his own lawyers, including campaign advisor Alina Habba and John Sauer, as they awkwardly stood behind him. Sauer at least managed to be out of most shots with Trump, standing to the side of Habba.
Trump claimed he could not get a fair trial in New York City and accused the judge in the initial trial of being “rigged” and politically motivated.
Trump ranted:
I feel sad I have to come up here and explain it. I have all of this legal talent, but legal talent cannot overcome rigged judges, they can’t overcome a 4% Republican area, and I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you. They’re good people, they’re talented people. Today at the trial they didn’t mention the dress. So the Monica Lewinsky-type dress was a big part of the trial, big, big part of the trial. I said, ‘why didn’t you mention that?’ And I heard there was a dress involved and I wasn’t frightened at all because I did nothing with her. Never touched this woman, saw this woman — I had no idea who she was. ‘But they have a dress, sir.’ I said, ‘so what?’ ‘Well, sir, it’s very serious.’ They used that dress to try and intimidate me, they used that dress with the public, that dress was such a famous dress. It was Monica Lewinsky part two, the dress, and the judge wanted it for trial and it was going to go into trial and then they found out there was nothing on the dress, which I knew and then the judge wouldn’t allow it to be used so they used it as a cudgel, they used it as a hammer over my head.
The former president went on to blast Judge Lewis Kaplan for blocking a 2019 Carroll interview with Anderson Cooper from being used at trial.
Trump eventually found himself blasting Carroll and her book What Do We Need Men For? Carroll first wrote about her encounter with Trump in an essay and later further detailed it in her book. The author was previously awarded more than $80 million after her initial trial for defamation following the first judgement.
“The book would have been a total failure [without me] or it probably was or it probably sold more recently,” he said. “Again, this is a woman who wasn’t doing well until she came out with the stuff about me and that’s how it’s happened with others by the way.”
Watch above via CSPAN.
