Thursday’s showing by Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina may have been the most tone-deaf cross-examination in a rape trial since To Kill A Mockingbird.
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Thursday’s showing by Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina may have been the most tone-deaf cross-examination in a rape trial since To Kill A Mockingbird.
Today, Joe Tacopina, lead counsel for Donald Trump, cross-examined E. Jean Carroll after she testified that Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s.
During his moment in the spotlight, Tacopina was derisive, derogatory and dismissive. This may have been the most tone-deaf cross-examination in a rape trial since To Kill A Mockingbird.
The fireworks started from the first moment, when Tacopina started, “Good morning, Ms. Carroll.” She did not respond in kind, but instead remained silent—which was appropriate, as there was not question pending. Mr. Tacopina, visibly perturbed, raised his voice and repeated, “Good morning, Ms. Carroll!” At that point, she finally responded, “Good morning.”
It went downhill from there.
When Tacopina insinuated that Ms. Carroll only had a “story” that she was raped by Donald Trump, she gave no ground.
Q: Now, that is the book in which you included the story about your supposedly being raped by Donald Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room, right?
A: Not supposedly. I was raped.
When Mr. Tacopina again tried to make her retreat, she stood firm.
Q: That’s your version, right, Ms. Carroll, that you were raped.
A: Those are the facts.
Tacopina then belittled Ms. Carroll’s testimony that she did not come forward before Trump’s election because she was carrying for her dying mother.
Q: So yesterday when you testified that you didn’t want to come forward at this point, even though he was running for president and you claimed he had raped you, you didn’t want to do that because one of the reasons you said was your mother was dying, correct?
A: She was on her deathbed. My sisters and brother and I had joined her at the end of September to spend our last weeks together.
Q: And ultimately your mother unfortunately passed away in October of 2016, right?
A: Yes.
. . .
Q: And that's a month before the election took place, more or less, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: So why didn’t you come out with the story after your mother passed away before he was elected?
A: I was in deep, incredible, painful mourning.
Q: How old was your mother when she passed?
A: 97. She would have been 98.
Q: This had nothing to do with the fact that the book wasn’t ready yet, did it, Ms. Carroll, the reason you didn’t come out at that point?
A: I hadn’t conceived of writing a book at that point.
The jurors almost certainly heard that exchange as Tacopina stating that Ms. Carroll’s claim to be “in deep, incredible, painful mourning” had to be a lie, because no one could be surprised by the death of a 97 year old woman. If Tacopina did not already have a juror on his side, that question would almost certainly turn that juror against him.
After belittling Ms. Carroll’s grief, Tacopina then went in for the kill, using a text exchange between Carroll and Carol Martin (who is set to testify on behalf of Ms. Carroll) to show that they had a “scheme” to get Trump.
Carroll explained that in the text, “As soon as we are both well enough to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again,” the word “scheme” was “a typical word that Carol and I use, carrying no connotations of evil. It’s just a word that we use.”
Tacopina lost control of this line of questioning when he asked how Ms. Carroll could fail to remember that email, but could remember her conversation with Ms. Martin 28 years earlier.
Carroll responded, devastatingly: “I told Carol Martin what Trump did to me in the dressing room. Those are facts that I could never forget. This is an e-mail, among probably hundreds of e-mails between Carol and I, that I have no recollection of, but I suspect it’s something funny.”
Tacopina later attacked Carroll’s trustworthiness based upon her testimony that she laughed, but did not scream, when Donald Trump started to rape her. It did not go well for him.
Q: In fact, in response to this supposedly serious situation that you viewed as a fight, where you got physically hurt, it’s your story that you not only didn’t scream out, but you started laughing?