Donald Trump made a big mistake going into his second defamation trial with Alina Habba as his attorney, according to a legal expert.
The former president lost his first defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her and making defamatory denials about her claims, which then resulted in a $5 million penalty. But a second jury last week imposed an $83.3 million penalty for separate defamatory statements he made about her while serving as president.
"This is why you need experienced trial counsel," Palm Beach County attorney Dave Aronberg told MSNBC.
"Instead of Joe Tacopina, he had Alina Habba who was not familiar with the rules of evidence, who was showing her own disdain for the process. When you walk out in the middle of a closing argument, that's bad enough. When you're the former president and you have a Secret Service detail, everyone knows it.
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"It's different than if you or I walked out of the courtroom. This clearly caught the attention of the jurors who have to leave their families and jobs to be there, yet the defendant doesn't have the respect for the process to remain during closing arguments. All that came back to bite him."
"It's a massive punitive damage award," Aronberg added. "The total is $83.3 million for the whole verdict. The first verdict was $5 million. This shows how much this jury found him to be liable than the first one."
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