Why wasn&#39;t Trump criminally charged for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll? E. Jean Carroll has sued Donald Trump for battery. But battery is also a crime. Is anything known, or can we make any reasonable inferences, about why New York State hasn't charged him for battery?
E. Jean Carroll first sued Donald Trump in 2019 for defamation in connection with his statements in 2019 denying a prior assault upon her in the 1990s in response to her 2019 memoire asserted that he had done so in the 1990s. The statute of limitations in that case ran from the time that Trump made the statement. The first lawsuit is still pending because of issues over whether Presidential immunity from lawsuits applies to it: The Justice Department has argued Trump was acting as the president while responding to Carroll’s allegations and said the United States, rather than Trump himself, should be the defendant. If the courts agree, it would probably torpedo Carroll’s claim because the government cannot be sued for defamation. The issue remains unresolved. The D.C. Court of Appeals heard arguments on the case but essentially punted on the issue this month, sending it to another court. The criminal statute of limitations on this underlying conduct in the 1990s expired long before the lawsuit was filed. She did not press criminal charges at the time. Last year [i.e in 2022], Carroll filed a second lawsuit, this one accusing Trump of battery and defaming her again after he left office. That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the one scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday [i.e. last week]. The suit was filed in November 2022 as a New York law known as the Adult Survivors Act took effect. That law allowed sexual assault victims to sue years later, which proponents said was necessary because it can take considerable time for survivors to feel ready to speak out. All of the factual statements in this answer, including all quotes material, are from an April 24, 2023 article in the Washington Post. As a practical matter, a final resolution of the second lawsuit will resolve essentially all issues in the first lawsuit except Presidential immunity (and arguably a slight amount of damages), under the doctrine of collateral estoppel (a.k.a. issue preclusion). A defense verdict from the jury in the pending case would render the Presidential immunity issue in the first case moot. Sources including this one have concluded that the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is likely to withstand a constitutional challenge. This is because a similar law passed on 2019, the Child Victims Act (CVA), was upheld as constitutional. The ruling in the CVA cases, in turn, relied heavily on a 9-11 related statute of limitations revival act which was upheld by New York State's highest court in 2017: Shortly after the passage of the CVA, lawsuits were filed with the state and federal courts of New York arguing that the CVA was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause. Decisions have been rendered in state and federal courts holding that the CVA was constitutional. Both courts relied on the legal standard enumerated by the In re World Trade Ctr. Lower Manhattan Disaster Site Litig., 30 N.Y.3d 377, 400 (2017). which established that for a revival statute to be deemed constitutional under the Due Process Clause, there must exist an identifiable injustice that moved the Legislature to act,&quot; and second, &quot;in each case, the Legislature's revival of the plaintiff's claims for a limited period of time was reasonable in light of that injustice.&quot;
Charged: yes. Another answer has mentioned incitement to riot in 18 USC 2101. There is also incitement to insurrection in 18 USC 2383. This carries with it upon conviction a prohibition on holding office under the United States, both in the federal law itself and also via Amendment 14 of the Constitution of the United States. There are laws under which charges could be brought, and there is certainly no impediment to bringing them after M. Trump's term of office ends. Bringing them before then raises questions of presidential immunity, but I strongly doubt that speaking at the start of a &quot;Save America March&quot; can be construed as an action in any official Presidental capacity. Convicted: only maybe. M. Trump's statements have to extend beyond what is protected by Amendment 1 and actually be incitement to insurrection. Although there is a strong case that seeking to kill the Vice President of the United States (&quot;Where's Mike Pence?&quot; as people shouted) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (&quot;Tell Nancy we're coming for her!&quot;), seeking to obstruct the function of the Congress, and seeking to remove the Electoral College certificates, are indeed insurrection; as possibly is whatever the woman who refused to stop brandishing a knife at the door of the building was intending to do; reading the transcript of the whole speech given at the start of the &quot;Save America March&quot;, it is difficult to point to where M. Trump specifically incited any of those things. One can make circumstantial arguments, but the words actually uttered then and there merely encouraged marchers on a &quot;Save America March&quot; to march to the Capitol and cheer people on, &quot;demand&quot; that congresspeople &quot;do the right thing&quot;, and &quot;make your voices heard&quot;. This is in contrast to M. Trump's son and daughter in law who explicitly mention &quot;fight&quot;, &quot;fighter&quot;, and &quot;fighting&quot;, 7 times by Eric Trump by my count and 4 times by Lara Trump. And of course Rudy Giuliani not only said &quot;fight&quot; but also proposed &quot;trial by combat&quot;. In more potential criminal trouble than even them is lawyer and prominent Trump supporter, L. Lin Wood, who explicitly called, without equivocation, several times over a period of days, on Twitter and on Parler, for the Vice President of the United States to be executed by firing squad. There will certainly be mixed fortunes in the Trump family from this. Whilst there may be a case against Eric and Lara, and possibly Donald Sr.; Ivanka Trump did not speak beforehand that I know of, and is reported afterwards to have asked her father to go and speak to the mob about stopping, which she also did directly, albeit ineptly (&quot;American Patriots — any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.&quot;), herself via Twitter for a short while.
Jan Böhmermann faces prosecution in Germany for violating their penal code section 103 as discussed here. Lèse-majesté is not a crime in the UK, though apparently it was a common law crime in Scotland until 2010 (though not prosecuted since 1715). Though there is always the possibility of a defamation lawsuit, depending on what you say.
Is there something in the language of the act that makes sexual harassment a civil rather than a criminal offence? Yes. Laws that create criminal offenses have to have language to the effect of "violation of this law is punishable by up to X years of imprisonment or a fine of up to $Y", or "violation of this law is a Class Z felony." Sometimes it is not entirely clear if violation of a law can form a basis of a private civil lawsuit, or if it can only be enforced by government officials, from the language of the statute alone. When it is unclear the courts have to resolve that ambiguity. In rare instances, it may be clear that some parts of a statute have criminal penalties, but due to unclear wording and punctuation in the statute, it is hard to tell precisely which parts of the statute these criminal penalties apply to, and in those cases, courts also have to resolve that ambiguity. There is also some conduct that it is constitutional to punish with a civil penalty, but not as a crime that can result in incarceration. For example, it is unconstitutional in most states to incarcerate someone for failing to pay a debt, but there can be a civil penalty for failing to pay a debt. Courts decide if these constitutional limitations are violated. Similarly, while Congress can enact both crimes and civil penalties, there are some governmental bodies, like school districts or water boards, that have the power to enact certain civil penalties, but do not have the authority to create new crimes. Was that up to the lawmakers to decide, or is that just something that evolved out of the ways the courts and prosecutors responded to sexual harassment claims? And who decides such things in general? Generally, this is decided by lawmakers. Obviously, however, anyone can lobby legislators to take one position or another. Also, the fact that something has a civil penalty does not necessarily mean that prosecutors aren't the people who enforce the law. Sometimes violations of the law prosecuted by prosecutors have civil rather than criminal penalties. For example, many tax law violations are prosecuted by government lawyers with civil penalties, but only a small minority of tax law violations are prosecuted criminally. Further, it isn't uncommon for a type of offense, like securities fraud, to have both civil penalties and criminal charges available as remedies that can be enforced by prosecutors. And, when that happens, prosecutors get to decide which tool to use. For example, even if exactly the same conduct could be prosecuted with either a civil penalty or a criminal charge, prosecutors might prefer a civil penalty because the burden of proof is much lower, the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not apply (you can refuse to testify but that fact can be used against you in a civil penalty case), and a defendant in a civil penalty case doesn't have a right to a lawyer at government expense. Also, enforcing a civil penalty generates net revenue for the government most of the time, while criminal punishments normally cost the government more money to carry out than any revenue the government may receive from the person found guilty for fines and court costs. On the other hand, trying to enforce a significant enough civil penalty to discourage misconduct against someone who has no money or property may be a futile effort, while criminal sanctions could discourage misconduct from other similarly situated people in the future.
Embezzlement is criminally prohibited by 18 USC 666, and this DoJ manual page on what is embezzlement cites the answer in Moore v. United States, 160 U.S. 268 that Embezzlement is the fraudulent appropriation of property by a person to whom such property has been entrusted, or into whose hands it has lawfully come. It differs from larceny in that the original taking was lawful, or with the consent of the owner, while in larceny the felonious intent must have existed at the time of the taking Following other case law, the elements of the crime are there was a trust or fiduciary relationship between the defendant and the private organization or State or local government agency; the property came into the possession or care of the defendant by virtue of his/her employment; the defendant's dealings with the property constituted a fraudulent conversion or appropriation of it to his/her own use; and the defendant acted with the intent to deprive the owner of the use of this property. This page lists over 32,000 disbursements; filtering just for rent give over 2,400 disbursements, a number of which are recent and made to some business with Trump in the name (Trump Tower LLC etc). The conversion would have to be fraudulent to be embezzlement. There actually is not any evidence provided that a transfer violated FEC regulations (we have dates, amounts, and recipient), so we would have to speculate about what else is true. There are processed disbursement images up to 10/21/2020 such as this receipt for 3 charges for food and lodging paid to Trump Hotel Collection. In fact this payment was made by Donald J Trump for President, Inc. although the search term was the aforementioned PAC: I will overlook that anomaly. This is the FEC page on that committee (you have to follow the committee number because the name was also used in the 2016 campaign but was terminated). There vast numbers of filings linked there, but nothing that I saw indicates that Trump is in any sense an employee of the organization, so there is no actual evidence that there were any &quot;Trump actions&quot;. First, it would have to be shown that there were Trump actions. Second, it would have to be show that the action was fraudulent. Technical misappropriation is not fraudulent. This FEC page describes the safe harbor provisions for misappropriation. This page specifically addresses embezzlement. Although they use the word &quot;embezzlement&quot;, they do not purport that misappropriation constituted embezzlement as defined above, to point out that civil penalties may result from violation, see 11 CFR Part 104. Ultimately, the legal propriety of the disbursements depends on its purpose: here is what the FEC say about illegal conversion for personal use (food for daily consumption, mortgage or rent for personal residence, tuition...). The available evidence does not even suggest embezzlement.
In all cases of speech in U.S. Jurisprudence, the speech uttered is presumed First Amendment Protected unless proven otherwise. Critical to this proof is the intent of the speaker and his/her word choice and usage. In order to prove that Trump uttered unprotected speech, the prosecution must show that the language was deliberately spoken by Trump to promote Imminent Lawless Action (Brandenberg v. Ohio). That means that not only must the actions come with a defined time of action, but it also means that you have to prove Mens Rea - that Trump knew in his mind at the time he spoke that the words would incite. Finally, you cannot cherry pick a quote but rather must view the totality of the events in question. Trump did make statements against violence prior to and following the speech in question, which suggests he was not advocating for violent actions taken that day. The word &quot;fight&quot; which does not always mean a violent. Miriam-Webster's definition of &quot;to fight&quot; is: 1 : to struggle in battle or in physical combat. 2 : to argue angrily : quarrel. 3 : to try hard While the first definition of the word does indicate physical violence, but the second and third are possible to do with no violence whatsoever. The concept of fighting for something is often used by people at constitutionally protected protests and gatherings and the use of the term has never been used to convict the speaker for the misinterpretation of the words by the person who hears them. If this were the case, you can expect the Beastie Boys to get slapped with criminal charges for their advocacy of fighting for the right to Party (incidentally, the song never once advocates for violence in the pursuit of wild teen parties... it's merely a list of the restrictions and hypocrisies of the rule makers and enforcers). What's more, Mafia Dons don't normally go down for specific instructions to &quot;kill the mook&quot; but rather for RICO charges. Their whole organization is corrupt and thus they can be held responsible for the corrupt actions of people in their chain of command in the organization. There has yet to be any evidence supporting that Trump knew and participated in the planning of the assault on Congress. Yes, there was planning prior to the events, which means people would have done this without Trump's speech... which means they were not instructed specifically by him at the time. Trump could have said something different and the results would be the same. On top of that... the violence at Congress was started during Trumps speech, not after it... and the place where the speech was given was far enough away from Capitol Hill that it would be difficult to argue that the first wave of rioters even heard the speech let alone were influenced by it. You can believe this was Trumps goal all you want, but the fact of the matter is the law says that Trump does not have to do anything to prove his intent. The burden of proof rests with he who doubts is enforce and in order to prove the speech was unprotected, you have to show clear evidence Trump did intend for the riot to happen.
Yes, because the crimes are different instances. Let's remove the guilty plea and the fact that it is murder: can a person assault a person, be tried and imprisoned, then assault the same person later – and get off by declaring "Double jeopardy!". No, it's not the same crime. It's the same type of crime, and involves the same victim, but it is still a different crime. The same with your proposed scenario. (Incidentally, your first line is wrong: the woman wasn't murdered, she was thought to have been murdered).
The constitutional provision quoted in the question has been interpreted to require that a jury trial be available to a person accused of crime by the US Federal Government. Then accused is free to waive this right, and be tried by a judge only if s/he so chooses. The accuse is also free to waive the right to a trial altogether, and plead guilty (or &quot;no contest&quot; which waives a trail without an admission of guilt). The provision could reasonably be interpreted to require that if there is a trial, it be by jury. But I don't see how it could reasonably be read to require trials in all cases, and forbid guilty pleas.