- Before the $83 million verdict, the Carroll defamation jury watched Trump boast on tape about his wealth.
- “We have a lot of cash,” jurors watched Trump boast.
- This is an example of how President Trump's “I'm rich” boast can come back to bite in court.
Last week, when seven men and two women weighed in in federal court in Manhattan to decide how much of Donald Trump's money should go to E. Jean Carroll, the former president's I was able to receive guidance from leading financial experts.
That expert was Donald Trump.
The day before jurors awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages for President Trump falsely calling her a “bashing job” when she told the world he had sexually assaulted her, jurors asked Carol directly how wealthy she was.
In fact, one of the last things Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan did before dropping her defamation lawsuit against Trump was to play a video of Trump bragging about his large sums of cash.
It was the equivalent of parading Mr. Trump in front of a jury with a “Kick Me” sign taped to his back.
“We have many Some of the cash,'' Mr. Trump boasted in the video that Mr. Carroll's jury saw last Thursday morning.
“I think we effectively have over $400 million in cash, which is a lot for a developer,” Trump boasted, leaning toward the camera from his seat at the conference table.
“Developers typically don't have cash,” Trump continued enthusiastically. “I think we’re over 400 and it’s growing very significantly every month.”
The clip was from President Trump's April affidavit in a separate lawsuit. It showed him being questioned about his finances by a lawyer from the New York State Attorney General's Office.
“We have great assets,” he said in a brief deposition video watched by jurors. “And we have a very valuable company.”
Not the wisest legal strategy
Boasting his vast wealth was a questionable legal strategy, even when it was filmed in April.
Most people who sit for sworn testimony speak carefully.But Trump felt that I like to brag.
His defense against New York state charges that he fraudulently inflated his assets with banks was to argue, based on oath and tapes, that his numbers should have been even. taller than.
“I guess you're saying I racked up the numbers,” Trump told state officials in a deposition. “Well, that wasn't actually the case, because the numbers were much higher than they actually were.”
AG Letitia James accuses President Trump of overstating his net worth by $3.6 billion annually in 10 years of annual financial statements, thereby deceiving banks into reducing interest on his loans by $168 million. did.
“He's basically sticking his gold-plated foot in his mouth, but we don't know if it's real money or not,” said Tristan Snell, the lead prosecutor in the New York attorney general's investigation into Trump University. said.
Snell said President Trump's “I'm rich” boast hurt him both in the Carroll decision and in the upcoming fraud trial verdict.
In the fraud case, Trump's boasts showed he was doubling down on obscure math, he noted. And that same boast made it easy for Carroll's jurors to condemn him for a share of his wealth.
Carol's verdict had to hurt, otherwise it's meaningless.
In closing arguments, Kaplan said that to stop Trump from continuing to defame Carroll, the jury should award large punitive damages that hit Trump where it hurts. After all, Mr. Trump deliberately sat out last year's trial in which a jury agreed to sexually abuse Mr. Carroll. He appeared only at this year's trial, where a jury was deliberating monetary damages.
“Donald Trump may not care about the law, and he certainly doesn't care about the truth, but he cares about money,” Kaplan told jurors. “As a result, your decision to award substantial punitive damages may be E. Jean Carroll's only hope of ever again being freed from Donald Trump's relentless attacks.”
A jury returned a verdict later that day, ordering President Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million, with the bulk of that amount, $65 million, in punitive damages. The amount was significantly higher than the verdict last May, when another jury found Trump owed $5 million to Carroll for both defamation and sexual abuse. Of this amount, only $280,000 was awarded in punitive damages for defamation claims.
As Kaplan said in her closing argument, she asked the jury to show that President Trump “cannot use his wealth and power to denigrate people at any time.”
Punitive damages in defamation cases are thought to have the deterrent effect of preventing defamation from happening again. J. Eric Connolly represented Smartmatic in a defamation lawsuit over 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories, securing $177 million paid by Disney to settle the infamous defamation case He is a lawyer. “Pink Slime” casetold Business Insider that it makes sense for jurors to consider Trump's wealth. If the jury finds the defendant deep in pockets, he can also force the defendant to dig deep into those pockets.
“$1 million in punitive damages to ordinary people may be devastating, but $1 million in punitive damages to someone who brags about having as much wealth as President Trump claims is a deterrent.” “No,” said attorney Connolly. said Benesh Law Office.
Hearing President Trump say in a sworn affidavit that he had $400 million in cash just sitting around almost certainly influenced their decision, according to a new book, “Defeating Trump.'' Snell said there are 12 rules from the people who made Donald Trump successful.
In behavioral economics, this is called “anchoring,” Snell says. The idea of anchoring is that the first color that people see, or anchor, fixes any number of colors that they see later.
“There's actually a lot of science to support this,” Snell says. founder of MainStreet.law He is a frequent commentator on MSNBC.
“Mr. Trump has unwittingly locked the jury into a larger number,” he added. “I think it's his narcissistic urge to boast about himself, beyond all reason and common sense.”
Mr. Trump's wealth also explains why the jury awarded him so much punitive damages compared to the $18.3 million he awarded Mr. Carroll.
The jury sent a message that President Trump should be punished for his flagrant and habitual lies, which they unanimously found to be “malicious” in their final verdict, according to court records. Court records reveal that he may have been sent.
Connolly said Trump brought it to court when he tried to challenge the judge overseeing the trial, and jurors may be “fed up by the lack of civility in public debate.” Stated.
“We've entered this stage where everyone has become almost desensitized to being lied to, and that's not a healthy place to be,” Connolly said. “Maybe the jury is trying to send a message that we should come back a little better than we are.”
Jurors and judges want the verdict to bite.
In his testimony in April, Trump was sure to point out that his cash represented only a small portion of his wealth. The Carroll jury also heard President Trump boast about the value of his own “brand.”
His very name, “Trump,” adds “billions of dollars” of value to whatever it is placed on, he said in sworn testimony.
“So you became president because of the brand, right?” Trump was heard saying in the video. “I became the president of the company. I think it's the most-watched brand in the world.”
If the former president is to be taken at his word, the assets Trump has described, combined with his brand name, would theoretically total about $14 billion.
Perhaps Trump is actually not as wealthy as he claims.
First, he doesn't own all of the Trump Organization, so its assets don't exactly match his personal wealth.
Because the Trump Organization is private, valuations are typically difficult to obtain. But a spate of lawsuits, financial disclosures from his 2024 presidential bid, attempted SPAC deals, and leaked tax returns have all given us a window into his finances.
He is still very wealthy. A recent in-depth analysis by Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.6 billion. (In an affidavit, Trump downplayed Forbes' estimates, saying that “Forbes doesn't know about us” and that the magazine “has its own agenda.”) In January, Bloomberg reported that Trump It is estimated that the company holds approximately $600 million in liquid assets.
The jury in Carroll's trial was unable to come up with a more accurate estimate. But Chris Mattei, the defamation lawyer who won a $1.5 billion jury verdict against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, says it's clear the jury took into account his claims to be a wealthy man. That's what it means. Jurors may also have decided that $18.3 million in damages was not enough to hurt President Trump's finances.
“While they did not have accurate information about what assets Donald Trump had available, they believed a significant punitive judgment was warranted and perhaps something he could pay,” Mattei said. I believed there was,” he said.
Mr. Trump tried to make himself appear richer in his affidavit, as he did when he took the stand in the New York attorney general's trial, but that could work against him.
Arthur Engoron, the New York judge who oversaw the recently completed fraud case, frequently removed Mr. Trump's testimony from the record as Mr. Trump rambled about high real estate valuations. Mr Matei believes it is likely that Mr Engoron will not believe his own testimony at all in the impending sentencing.
“The extent to which he has acknowledged his wealth is inconsistent with the representations his company has made to its banks and business partners, and I think that is an issue,” Mattei said. “However, it is highly questionable whether a judge would accept his personal estimate of all his assets as fact.”