Just In: Wow

This is a wow. 

I don’t know if it will get much attention (or even any) on the news today, but I hope so, and it's hard to imagine that it won't.  Because it truly is a "Wow!"  And as I write this, it's just in.

The judge in the E. Jean Carroll case today, Lewis A. Kaplan, rejected Trump’s attempt to have the verdict thrown out…while at the same time (and this is the "Wow!" news) bluntly explaining that Trump’s insistence that he was vindicated by the verdict saying he didn’t rape her is untrue, because -- the judge says -- by the standard use of the word (rather than the narrow NY legal use), he did, in fact, rape her!!

For those who like to read full legal documents, the 59-page ruling is here.

But this is the appropriate passage – 

The jury’s unanimous verdict in Carroll II was almost entirely in favor of Ms. Carroll. The only point on which Ms. Carroll did not prevail was whether she had proved that Mr. Trump had “raped” her within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law – a section that provides that the label “rape” as used in criminal prosecutions in New York applies only to vaginal penetration by a penis. Forcible, unconsented-to penetration of the vagina or of other bodily orifices by fingers, other body parts, or other articles or materials is not called “rape” under the New York Penal Law. It instead is labeled “sexual abuse.” As is shown in the following notes, the definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of “rape” in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere.  The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was “raped” within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump “raped” her as many people commonly understand the word “rape.” Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that. …This jury did not award Ms. Carroll more than $2 million for groping her breasts through her clothing, wrongful as that might have been. There was no evidence at all of such behavior. Instead, the proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm. Mr. Trump’s argument therefore ignores the bulk of the evidence at trial, misinterprets the jury’s verdict, and mistakenly focuses on the New York Penal Law definition of “rape” to the exclusion of the meaning of that word as it often is used in everyday life and of the evidence of what actually occurred between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump.