Trump Flames His Lawyer Joe Tacopina On Truth Social

Good Morning, Joe Tacopina!

Time for a little client feedback. Don’t bother checking Avvo or Yelp — he’ll come to you.

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This disgusting Slob, a Democrat Political Operative, is the same guy who funded a woman who I knew absolutely nothing about, sued me for Rape, for which I was found NOT GUILTY. She didn’t remember the year, decade, or much else! In Interviews she said some amazingly “inconsistent” things. Disgraceful Trial—Very unfair. I was asked by my lawyer not to attend—“It was beneath me, and they have no case.” That was not good advice.

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For those who don’t speak brain-addled former president …

The “slob” bit is a reference to Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn who paid some of the fees associated with E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and sexual abuse lawsuits against Donald Trump. He did not “fund” Carroll, whose lawyers were working on contingency and who filed her lawsuit ten months before Hoffman’s intercession.

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The Carroll case was civil, not criminal, and thus he was found not criminally liable for rape. In fact, Trump has Joe Tacopina to thank for that one, since Tacopina managed to convince the jury that Trump might not have been able to get his pants down to penetrate Carroll with his penis while holding her against the wall and forcing his hand inside her. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but not rape.

And to his everlasting credit, Tacopina managed to keep Trump out of the courtroom for the duration of the trial. We almost felt sorry for him back in May when Trump waddled over to reporters on a golf course in Ireland and vowed that he would cut his trip short to go testify in the Carroll suit.

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“I have to go back for a woman who’s made a false allegation about me. And I have a judge that’s extremely hostile,” he babbled. “And I’m going to go back and confront this woman.”

Back in New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan interrogated a deeply uncomfortable Tacopina, who was unequivocal that his client would not be appearing in court. Because Donald Trump is a TERRIBLE witness, as his antics during the civil fraud trial ongoing in New York prove.

On the witness stand in the fraud case, he hurled abuse at the judge and the prosecutor and attempted to introduce evidence he pulled out of his pocket. Letting Trump run that play in federal court before a jury would be insane, as Tacopina knew perfectly well. It was damaging enough that Carroll’s lawyer played deposition videos of him confusing Carroll for his second wife, spontaneously opining on the sexual desirability of Carroll’s counsel, and agreeing that, when you’re a star, they absolutely let you do it.

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Perhaps Trump is confused because he’s having such a good time giving impromptu press conferences inside the courthouse in his state case. He seems to think he’d have been able to mug it up for the cameras and then wow the jury by screaming at the judge on the witness stand in the Carroll case. But while the New York state and federal courthouses are geographically close, they’re a world apart. There is zero chance that Judge Lewis Kaplan would put up with the antics Trump got away with in front of Justice Arthur Engoron.

We won’t have to guess much longer, though, since the second Carroll case is coming up in just five weeks, and this time Joseph Tacopina is not the attorney of record. Alina Habba and her partner Michael Madaio have handled the proceedings thus far, and it’s all going swimmingly! They’ve managed to get a partial summary judgment on the issue of whether their client sexually abused and defamed Carroll — he did! — and their only expert witness has been excluded. This last might have been foreseeable when the expert was tossed in March before the first trial, but Habba and Madaio gamely put him forward again and hoped for the best.

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Let’s see whether Habba and Madaio welcome their client to the courtroom to snort derisively at Carroll as she describes her trauma on the witness stand. Jurors love that shit! Maybe they’ll even go for broke and let Trump testify.

Meanwhile, Tacopina is still entered in the New York state criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. No doubt he appreciates the shout out on Truth Social.

Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Courts, Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, Government, Joe Tacopina