Tuesday, November 1, 2016

A Lawyer Weighs in on Trump Legal Cases

First: Donald Trump has been sued civilly by a woman who claims he raped her when she was 13. I am prepared to believe the very worst about Trump, and I don't know whether this is true or not, but I am more than usually skeptical based on the lawsuit's provenance. The case is not "going to trial" in December. It has been set for a completely routine early status conference in December that will lead to more complete schedules. As far as I can tell, no discovery has been conducted by either side. The case is an allegation against Donald Trump. The fact that I hate Donald Trump does not mean that the allegation is or is not true.

Second: Trump is also facing a civil suit accusing him of RICO violations. I wrote about the case months ago and dismissed the Trumpalo narrative that the judge — attacked by the Trump campaign for his ethnic background — was treating Trump unfairly. The case (and its companion case) accuse Trump of defrauding victims of the scamtastic Trump University. Here, there has been discovery, and the RICO charge survived summary judgment. That means that the judge found that the plaintiffs supplied some evidence which, if accepted as true, would be legally sufficient to support a RICO claim. RICO claims are usually bullshit, and even though this one survived the very low bar of summary judgment, I think it's still styled as a RICO more for public relations purposes than out of merit. Styling something as a RICO claim (rather than, say, a fraud claim) is attention-getting and emotive but rarely substantive. It is not accurate, as some are saying carelessly, that Trump is "charged with racketeering." This is a private civil suit. It may or may not go to trial when scheduled in late November; continuances of such trials are more the rule than the exception.

  Popehat
If you want to follow up on references, links are embedded in the article.


And I bet that's a first.  May not be a first that a president raped a 13-year-old child, but these types of things used to be kept under wraps.  Which I am not saying is a good thing.  I have to wonder what presidents got away with before the internet and anonymous leaks were as plentiful as sunny days in Arizona.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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