Ben Meiselas & Karen F. Agnifilo: 'Donald Trump Lawyer MASSIVE SCREW UP Leads to Court of Appeals LOSS'

Source:Meidas Touch- left to right: Donald Trump's self-screwer Alina Habba & Defendant Don.

"Legal AF host Ben Meiselas and Karen Friedman Agnifilo report on decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denying Donald Trump’s claim to civil immunity in a defamation case on the grounds of the waiver of the defense by his lawyers." 

From the Meidas Touch

"NEW YORK — Donald Trump cannot use presidential immunity to avoid a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday after finding that Trump waited too long to invoke the defense.

It’s the third time in recent weeks that federal courts have rejected immunity arguments from Trump as he battles multiple legal fronts in criminal and civil cases. 

The ruling paves the way for Carroll’s lawsuit to proceed to trial in January. The case concerns comments Trump made about Carroll in 2019, shortly after Carroll came forward and accused Trump of raping her decades earlier. Trump said Carroll was peddling a false accusation and was motivated by money.

Three years after Carroll sued Trump for defamation over those comments, Trump attempted to assert presidential immunity, a broad doctrine that shields presidents from lawsuits arising from their official acts.

But on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found that Trump had waived his right to use the immunity defense because he waited too long to invoke it.

“We hold that presidential immunity is waivable and that Defendant waived this defense,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

All three judges on the panel were appointed by Democratic presidents. 

Trump has attempted to evade many of his legal troubles by mounting aggressive immunity defenses, claiming that virtually anything he did while president cannot subject him to civil liability or criminal consequences. But courts have largely rejected those arguments so far.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Trump appealed that decision, prompting special counsel Jack Smith to take the issue directly to the Supreme Court in hopes of obtaining a swift and definitive ruling on the question.

Chutkan’s ruling came just hours after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s claims of immunity from a series of civil lawsuits that seek to hold him accountable for stoking the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the Carroll decision on Wednesday, the 2nd Circuit panel also said it did not have jurisdiction to review a trial judge’s ruling that Trump did, in fact, defame Carroll with his 2019 comments. With that ruling in place, a jury will decide at the January trial how much money in damages Trump should pay to Carroll.

The January trial will be the second trial Trump will face tied to Carroll’s rape allegations. Earlier this year, a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and that he defamed her in 2022 when he called her account a “hoax.” The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million."

From POLITICO

As I wrote about Alina Habba back in November on The New Democrat:

"When you are the President of the United States, regardless of the POTUS, you have access to be the best of legal profession in this country. Any lawyer just about would be honored to either work in your White House, or work as your personal attorney to address any personal legal issues that you might have when you are President. At least access to the best lawyers in your own party. 

But when you leave The White House, especially in disgrace, when you've just lost reelection and only managed 46% of the popular vote and 232 out of 574 electoral votes, in a two-way race, you've been impeached twice in just 4 years, you have all the legal issues that are now in front of you because of your illegal conduct as President of the United States, you are very unpopular, at least outside of your own party, you have mounting financial debt in front of you because of all the money that you lost when you were President, you have access to whatever is left. 

Alina Habba is not really a trial lawyer. She can barely afford to do whatever she does as a lawyer right now. She's more of a public relations lawyer, if anything at all, who makes her living trying her client's cases on TV and on social media. But she's officially Donald Trump's civil lawyer right now because she's about the best of what's left to try to defend him, because of his own financial situation and all the evidence that's against him right now, in multiple cases. 

Perhaps one of the reasons right now that Alina Habba owes millions of dollars, is because her own client is not paying her. But she's trying to work for him anyway, perhaps banking on the fact that defending a former President of the United States, would lead to clients who can and would pay her very well for her legal advice and actions in the future. But that career strategy is obviously not working out for her right now. " 

So to put all of this in English: (or perhaps broken American English) Donald Trump lost his civil immunity case in the E. Jeanne Carrol case, because his own damn lawyer Alina Habba, didn't file her motion in time to win that appeal and give her client civil immunity here. 

My post about DJT's lawyer Alina Habba from back in November still stands here. She's not up to the task, doesn't have the experience, the knowledge, the professionalism, to defend a client at the level of Donald Trump, when you are talking about a former President of the United States and now serial criminal defendant. 

DJT needs much better legal representation. But Alina Habba might be the best of what's left to even consider representing a man who not only commits felonies on a regular basis, but who leaves incriminating evidence against him all over the place, either thinking he'll never get caught, or convicted, or he's simply above the law and has some constitutional right that no other American citizen has. 

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