Some people never learn. Despite being found liable for sexual assault and defamation last year, in a civil action brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who sued him for slanderous statements attempting to rebut her claims of rape, Donald Trump continued to defame Carroll, post-verdict. And Carroll continued to sue him. And Trump continues to defame her. Will she sue again?
With national Republican figures, from the highest to the lowest, being indicted, tried and convicted of multiple crimes in both civil and criminal cases, the GOP runs the serious risk of becoming identified as the party of lawlessness as the 2024 elections careen toward us. Two major developments in as many days in early May added fuel to the fire of Republican miscreants, much in the way a spate of stories involving GOP corruption and sexual misconduct led to Democrats reclaiming the House in 2006. On May 9th, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll civil rape suit, and on the following day Trump Mini-Me George Santos, with aspirations to ascend to Liar-in-Chief, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress.
April 25, 2023 witnesses the opening of the first salvo of courtroom dramas involving former US president Donald J. Trump, although as a civil case, he’s not required to attend in person, and likely won’t do so. The case is brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. No, the charge isn’t rape – it’s defamation of character, following statements Trump made after Carroll publicly accused him in 2019, when he denied ever meeting her, much less assaulting her, in terms peppered with his patented brand of denigration and misogynistic dismissal.
Two famous Andrews came to crisis moments in their biographies within a day of each other, in mid-August 2021. On the 9th, a lawsuit was filed against HRH Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, alleging sexual abuse of a minor; and on the 10th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned under a firestorm of condemnation after a probe into allegations of sexual misconduct revealed a pattern of abuse of female staffers.
Two Andrews, in two days, both charged with sex crimes? What’s going on here, celestially speaking?
When allegations first surfaced in late February 2021 that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had been behaving inappropriately with female staffers and others, I took a look at the chart. We’re hampered in not having a time of birth, so can’t determine Angles, the Moon, or which minor bodies might be emphasized by connection to same. Still, he has the signatures of a serial abuser, but the acts then alleged – which amounted to inappropriate, flirtatious office conversations and an unwanted kiss – didn’t rise nearly to the level of what these cosmic bad boys are capable of. So I let things ride for awhile, to see if another shoe would drop. That happened on March 11th, when an unnamed former staffer accused Cuomo of groping her on the job. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Breaking through the coronavirus newsdemic these days is a story about alleged sexual assault by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer, has charged Biden with groping and digital penetration in a Senate basement in 1993. Reade was one of several women to come forward in the spring of 2019 alleging that Biden’s famously “handsy” manner with females made them uncomfortable. All stopped short of charging assault, and defenders of the former VP (including many women he has treated with this undue familiarity) ascribe his often odd-looking interactions – extended hugging, hair-stroking, neck-nuzzling – to his desire to comfort or put at ease his interlocutors. Biden has since acknowledged that his style of relating with females who are relative strangers needs to be revised in the #MeToo era.
Reade also refrained from accusing Biden of improper or illegal activity last spring, until March 25, 2020, when she first publicly charged him with assault in a radio interview. Reade states that she filed a complaint for sexual harassment at the time, but was too frightened to report the full incident. Reade did not keep a copy of the complaint, and so far none has been found in Senate records or Biden’s staff records.
