Opinion | Trump’s made-for-MAGA arguments keep losing in court

Let’s take E. Jean Carroll’s civil claims against Trump. In the so-called E. Jean Carroll I case concerning his defamation of her while president, Trump initially persuaded the Justice Department to follow former attorney general William P. Barr’s position that his statements during his presidency were within the scope of his official duties. This would have obliged the department to defend him. But a federal court judge rejected that position. Trump later repeated his defamatory statements after leaving the presidency, most recently at a CNN town hall. The judge allowed Carroll to amend her complaint.

Meanwhile, Trump lost all attempts to stall and dismiss what’s known as E. Jean Carroll II, the case brought for defamation after Trump’s presidency and for sexual assault under the Adult Survivors Act. The jury decided that Trump defamed Carroll and sexually assaulted her, awarding her $5 million. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied a new trial, finding Trump’s claims “frivolous.”

Moreover, as NBC News reported on July 19:

Trump has filed a counterclaim alleging Carroll defamed him by continuing to say he raped her in public statements following the jury verdict.

In his ruling Wednesday, Judge Kaplan indicated that may be a losing argument.

He noted that rape in New York criminal law “applies only to vaginal penetration by a penis,” a definition that is “far narrower than the meaning of ‘rape’ in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere.”

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” he wrote.

Trump is an adjudicated liar and sexual batterer.

Consider then the New York criminal indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleging falsification of business documents. Trump has tried everything — e.g., demanding the judge recuse himself; trying to remove the case to federal court — to no avail. His complaint that the case is too trivial carries no weight with the prosecutor or judge. He will almost certainly face trial within a year. (This is separate from the successful criminal tax fraud case against Trump’s company that resulted in a verdict of more than $1.6 million.)

Trump also faces a state civil case from New York Attorney General Letitia James alleging that Trump operated a massive scheme to inflate property values. He again failed to get the case dismissed. (The New York Times reported in January: “In a sharply worded order, the judge, Justice Arthur F. Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, denied Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the case. … In his written order, Justice Engoron said that some of the arguments repeatedly made by Mr. Trump’s lawyers were ‘frivolous,’ and had been ‘borderline frivolous even the first time defendants made them.’”)

Now let’s turn to Georgia’s criminal investigation of the phony elector scheme and the effort to cajole Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to flip the state to Trump. The former president and his allies have failed in every attempt to foreclose testimony of former and current aides, political allies and lawyers by claiming attorney-client privilege and executive privilege and citing the Constitution’s speech and debate clause.

Trump’s recent motion to dismiss the entire matter failed in Georgia’s state Supreme Court. In a unanimous ruling, the court found that “even if the petition were procedurally appropriate, Petitioner has not shown that he would be entitled to the relief he seeks. … And, with regard to Petitioner’s request to disqualify [Fulton County district attorney Fani] Willis from representing any party in any and all proceedings involving him, we note only that Petitioner has not presented in his original petition either the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification by this Court at this time on this record.” He can rail against Willis, baselessly calling her “racist,” but that does not help him in court.

Meanwhile, in the Mar-a-Lago documents matter, Trump brought a civil case seeking to return the classified documents seized pursuant to a lawfully executed warrant and enjoin the investigation. He enjoyed a short-lived victory when his appointee to the federal bench, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, held in his favor in a widely panned ruling appointing a special master to review the documents. However, her ruling was swiftly overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and Cannon was forced to dismiss the case.

In the underlying special counsel criminal investigation into alleged obstruction and violation of the Espionage Act, Trump’s claims that he magically declassified documents and that special counsel Jack Smith and the FBI are out to get him provided no protection. He lost a critical attorney-client privilege claim because of the crime-fraud exception, turning his lawyer Evan Corcoran into a witness for the government. Trump, the 2024 GOP front-runner, was indicted on 37 counts, spelled out in jaw-dropping detail in Smith’s filing. Trump’s attempt to postpone the case indefinitely also fell on deaf ears; this past week, Cannon set the trial to begin next May.

We now come to the main event: the federal case concerning Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump lost more than 60 cases challenging the result. No evidence of significant fraud was ever presented in these cases, and several attorneys involved in bringing them face disbarment.

As a preliminary matter, more than 1,000 rioters and Jan. 6 plotters have been charged, and more than 480 have been convicted of a variety of serious crimes including seditious conspiracy. None has succeeded in claiming this was a government plot or the work of left-wing groups.

Trump, meanwhile, has failed to keep top aides and advisers from testifying. His attorney-client privilege with lawyer John Eastman was pierced, again a result of the crime-fraud exception. Witnesses including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former vice president Mike Pence and former White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin have all been required to testify. Again, no privilege or immunity claim has prevailed.

Trump has already received a target letter, reportedly referencing charges for obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to deprive individuals of the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” (The latter might entail a charge that Trump deprived people of the states who voted for Biden the right to have their votes accurately tabulated.)

For all of Trump’s crazed accusations, pleas of victimhood, conspiracies and outright lies, nothing has worked so far to shield him from civil liability or criminal prosecution. What passes for an argument on right-wing media or for MAGA cult members and lawmakers carries no weight in courts of law.

Trump is not exempt from the laws that others must follow. He cannot claim that his actions — many of which he has admitted to in speeches and interviews — are either too small or too big to trigger criminal liability. Soon, he will face juries of ordinary Americans who will decide whether he should be held accountable for his conduct. And none of his inane excuses, lies, conspiracies or delaying tactics should protect him.