Transcript of George Conway Explains: How Trump Lost $83M (with Roberta Kaplan!)

In the first deposition, I had all the evidence. I had him saying these lies on video. And he realized as the case went on, that kind of. We had the goods on him. And he got increasingly unhappy as the deposition went on. So I said, sir, we have. I just have one more topic I want to cover, and then we'll break for lunch, if that's okay with you. And he looked at me and he said, well, why do we have to break for lunch? Let's just go straight through. This is a waste of my time. And then you could kind of see the wheel spinning in his braid. And he said, well, you're here in Mar a Lago. What do you think you're going to do for lunch? And so I said to, you know, I raised this question with your attorneys yesterday, sir, and they graciously offered to provide us with lunch, at which point there was a huge pile of documents, exhibits sitting in front of him. And he took the pile and he just threw it across the table because he was mad.

You were going to eat lunch because.

They'D offered us a free lunch at Mar a Lago.

Yeah, right.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to George Conway explains it all. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark. And because I am not a lawyer, I have asked my good friend George Conway from the Society for the rule of law to explain the legal news to me every week. But on today's show, we are going to talk to super lawyers Robbie Kaplan and Matt Craig, who just won the $83 million verdict against Trump.

83.380.

Don't forget the .3 million. Leave it out.

You do a lot for $300,000.

That's true.

But you know what? In this verdict, it's so big that $300,000 is a rounding error.

Amazing.

My producer didn't even put it on the sheet. And so she won this verdict in the E. Jean Carol defamation case. Now, I know a lot of you are watching us on YouTube, which is great, but I want you to all take out your phone, go to whatever podcast app you use, search George Conway explains it all, and then hit subscribe and give us a five star review.

Yeah. By the way, this isn't George Conway explains it all. Today's episode is going to be Robbie explains it all. And I am going to basically just sit back like the old guys, the Muppet guys in the balcony making jokes.

Great reference.

I'm just going to be here for comic relief, and it's going to be ask Robbie Kaplan, who's going to explain it all. So that's what this show is going to.

Yeah.

You guys aren't going to want to miss it. I tell you, we laugh, we cry. There are incredible anecdotes. Break some news we're going to get right to our episode with Robbie Kaplan and her colleague Matt Craig, who are two of Eugene's Carroll's lawyers. I hope you guys enjoy this. Robbie and Matt, welcome to our podcast. Such an honor to have you. For folks who don't know, Robbie Kaplan is a renowned litigator who is probably most famous for representing Edie Windsor at the supreme Court, a case that struck down the defensive Marriage act and paved the way for marriage equality. And as somebody who got one of those gay marriages, I just want to say thank you personally and my kids. Thank you. And so that's just a huge thing.

What do I get?

You just hold on.

Okay.

And I'm going to talk about Matt. So Matt Craig has worked alongside Robbie representing E. Jean Carroll since 2019 and was the trial counsel in both trials. So congratulations.

Thank you.

Okay, now, Robbie, so much winning.

So much winning on our screen here. It's just amazing.

Now, Robbie George likes to take credit for your representation of E. Jean Carol.

Let'S not overdo it. I just was, like, at the right place at the right time in that spot in the universe that just happened to matter that one instant.

Okay, well, why don't you just tell us? So how do you know each other, and how did it come to be that you introduced Robbie and Eugene?

Carrie? Well, this is actually a good story because it allows us to talk about yet another case that Robbie has against the Donald, which is a case called ACn. And I'll have her describe that. But basically, I was sitting in my office in New York, I was before I retired, and I read about this case that someone had brought involving this scam called ACN. That was something that Donald Trump and his kids were pushing on the Apprentice. And I read the complaint and I said, wow, this is a really well done document. And then I saw it was done by Robbie, and I knew who Robbie was by reputation. And I direct messaged her, I think, on Twitter and said, you're doing an amazing job here. This is a great document. And then we had lunch, and then we became friends and lived happily ever after. That's the end of the.

I mean, obviously, maybe other side of the aisle politically from George. Were you equally impressed with his litigating ability?

Oh, stop.

I was so much more impressed with his litigating ability, Sarah, than he was with mine. I don't even know where to get.

That is not true. That is not true. I worshiped you from the very beginning when we had that first sushi.

Think we were ever in cases together? I was trying to remember we didn't have that many cases with Waktal at Paul Weiss.

No, that's true. I mean, we have had some, but no, I have someone with Brad Karp and some other know.

And so you're at a party and you meet E. Jean Carroll and you're a Molly Junkvass house.

Yeah. What happened? Yeah, no, we'll tell that story next. Yeah. So we became friends, and Robbie is doing the Lord's work in many ways. And one day this story comes out in New York magazine. It was like a Thursday afternoon or something in June of 2019. And I read this story and I'm thinking to myself, wow, there's a real pattern here of what this guy has done. And I really focused on the whole pattern. And I tweeted some stuff out about the pattern of his behavior. And then I thought about the fact that the Trump campaign had brought out Juanita Broderick and trotted her out after the access Hollywood tape and know Bill Clinton raped this woman. And she told her story again. And I realized as I was studying through this in the next week, I realized Jean's case was much stronger because she actually had contemporaneous witnesses who she told immediately after the fact. And there are a bunch of other reasons. So I wrote a piece in an op ed in the Washington Post in June of 2019 saying, hey, republicans, don't be hypocrites. If you think that Juanita Broderick was brave, well, then you should be standing up for E.

Jean Carroll, which, of course, they did not. And then it just so happened that a few weeks later. And I think it was June, what, 15th? I think it was 2019. And I go to this party at Molly John fast apartment in Manhattan.

It had to be a little later than that, George, because the statements were made June 21.

No, July.

July.

I meant July. Right. It was July 15. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. It was June was when the statements came out. And it was July 15. And I think July 16 was when I put up something like that was the email I sent to you guys. And I see there's eg and Carol, and I say, ma'am, glad to meet you. She's elegant, tall woman. I had no idea she was pushing 80. It was crazy. And she was very nice. And you could see there was a lot you could see the weight on her shoulders. I mean, she's a very, very exuberant woman, and she was very friendly. That's Jean Carroll. But you could just feel the weight on her shoulders. And she told me she knew who I was. She thanked me for the piece, I think, that I had written in the post. I think that she did that. And I said, I praised her for her courage. And she said, some people are saying I should sue. What do you think, in essence, I don't remember the exact conversation. And I thought for about a millisecond, I mean, literally, within 2 seconds, I said, you have a.

You know, my thinking was, this happened. I'm sure he's lying. I'm sure she's telling the truth, and he's lying publicly about her, calling her a whack job and a liar. That's defamation, period.

Yeah.

Although, Robbie, did you think it was a case? So George introduces Eugene Carroll to you, and when you.

Well, let me. Let me finish the story. This is a two minute conversation. And I explained to mean not Robbie to Eugene, like, okay, this would be a civil case for defamation, a criminal case for sexual assault. The statute would have run, although the criminal statute would have run. And then I thought, oh, I know who can represent her. And I don't think I told E. Jean at that time who I was thinking of, but I said, I have an idea, and give me your email address, and I'll get back to you. And the next morning, I think I emailed or emailed or called Robbie and asked her if she'd be interested in talking to Eugene. Carol and then I sent this email, which was, I think, janet. 08:47 a.m. On the 16 July 2019. And then I went on, do you.

Remember the date and time? Robbie, was it that important to you that you've got it?

No, I found the email.

Okay. Yeah, you went back and looked at it. But tell me, the question I was asking is, did it feel to you when you looked at it like, yes, this is a case, no doubt about it? Because I think for a lot of people, it seemed like it had been such a long time ago that there was no way that this was something that could come back and really be meaningful. I think people are shocked at how this has gone.

So upon seeing the email, I'm not sure I thought anything one way or the other other than I'd be certainly willing to talk to her. And then, man, I don't know if you remember, was she in the city and came by that day? Or the next day.

I remember a time around that time when she came into the office. I remember seeing her there and being intrigued. I actually wasn't sort of involved in those first couple days, but I think it was soon after that she showed up in our empire state building offices.

Yeah. So she came to our office and we just start to talk. And like George, the fact that she had two contemporaneous outcry witnesses, neither of whom seemed to me would have been, even though they're close friends, would have been willing to lie for her and kind of how charming she was, how there was no pre existing or continuing relationship with Trump. In other words, she wouldn't have been interested in Donald Trump. Really. She didn't want to do business with him. She wanted to be on his shows. She lived in a very different world than he did and kind of was at the pinnacle of her success then. So it just felt to me like a very credible story. And when you thought about what he was saying, which is it didn't happen at all, you have to think back that either E. Jean and her two friends in 1996 came up with a lie. To be able to tell about Donald Trump later when he got elected to be president, I mean, that's just insane because no one would have thought that. Or when he was elected president, they came up with this lie.

But then they waited three years till Eugene's mother died to tell, like, none of it made any sense.

Right.

So I thought it was a pretty strong case from the very beginning. We certainly knew, as we later learned, that there were going to be major complications with the fact that he made the statements while president. We weren't completely dumb about that. We knew that was going to be a problem. But on its fact, I thought it was a pretty decent case.

Yeah. And I remember the thing that really struck me was I think the New York Times didn't play the story up that weekend, of the first weekend. And then people said, well, this is a major story, guys. And they kind of made up for it by doing a recorded interview with Carol Martin and Lisa Bernbach. And I listened to that, and that was what convinced me. And I said, okay, this happened. This absolutely freaking happened. And that was my mindset when I met Egene at that party. That's what sold me. Absolutely.

The story itself, Sarah, is just so bizarre. Like, who would make up a story like Bergdorf? You're coming out of Bergdorf's. You run into him. She remembers very significant details which ended up matching what the people, the two witnesses we had, who worked at Bergdorf at the time, said about the layout of the store, about how they walked around, about how it was pretty empty in the evening. The one night of the week was open in the evenings. Then was like, if you're going to make up a story that Trump raped you, a, it wouldn't be so weird, and b, you wouldn't make the concessions Eugene made. Like, she testified on the stand that while I hate to get gruesome about this, but while she absolutely remembered the pain and the feeling of him invading her, we're really very prude. So I hate to talk about the details, but with her fingers, and she felt his penis, she didn't think it was that long, and she managed to push him off. If you're going to make up a lie, that's not what you'd say.

Yeah.

Right. And then the other thing for me that I always thought was our ace in the hole was Carol Martin. I had grown up in New York City in law school with Carol Martin being a tv newscaster, and everyone knew who she was. She's an african american woman who really worked her way up through the ranks in tv news. And to me, the idea that Carol Martin would lie, even as close as they were, would lie for Eugene Carroll was just preposterous.

Yeah. I mean, this is sort of the problem Trump has all around, is he lies about everything, and he tells whoppers that he doesn't necessarily need to tell. I mean, the whoppers here was, I never met her. And the New York magazine article that came out that revealed this story had a photograph of them together. Okay. And he watches television obsessively. Okay. And E. Jean Carroll was on tv.

Right after Roger Ails's show, right after Roger Ayles'show.

And the other lie mean, she's not my. Didn't the woman accuses you of rape and you say, no, I didn't rape her because she's not my type. I mean, it's just classic trumpy crazy. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, as E. Jean put it, I think she testified she thought the lie that he would tell would be. It was consensual. Right? And that's just. He can't help himself, and it's just craziness. And you realize he's lying and she's telling the truth. When you factor in the two outcry, mean.

So, Robbie and Matt, I do focus groups every week, and for lots of the people that we talk to, the.

Cases against Trump are like Sarah preparing for the trial.

Yeah, that's interesting. I would love to talk about that sometime. But what's interesting is how the cases are for these voters, which is they're like white noise. They can't tell them apart from each other. And one of the reasons George and I started this podcast was to help me as a non lawyer, and other folks like me sort of make sense of what was going on. So if you could distill this case, like, what are the one or two things that you think are important for people to understand about this case?

So I think the case, I said this morning, I think the case has two primary elements. One is the bravery of someone like Eugene Carroll, who was, in my view, completely rational in 1996, deciding not to report this to police, the police not to do anything about it, would have been horrible for her had she done that. But who lived with this pain for many years and who, frankly, since she's so kind of always have a smile on your face. I can face anything. I'm a gonzo journalist, and I can be as tough as the guys, really, for many years, refused to acknowledge the ways that it hurt her, which I found kind of extraordinary. And so it's a real story, I think, for a lot of women and her generation and others who just endured this in silence, I think that's a huge piece of this case. And then the other piece of the case is the unbelievable. I know George would call it pathological narcissism of Donald Trump and the idea that he just doesn't think the rules apply to him in any way, shape, or form, whether it's sexual assault, or it's lying in court, or it's defaming someone or it's not respecting the judge.

The pattern is just so blatant. And that's why the verdict was so much bigger. I think the second trial, I mean, there's other reasons for it under the law, but it's because he showed up the second time.

Yeah. And when you say there's actually a lesson for the election here, he's not going to do as well in the polls as he's been doing when people start seeing him again behaving the way he behaves. And one of the things I think that politically has to be done is for people to point out when he's not behaving the way a normal human being is behaving, it drives him nuts, and it's a cycle. And what happened in front of this jury, I think, is going to happen again in public.

Matt, I know you wanted to say something. Go ahead.

And this is actually built on what George was saying. But I think, and what Robbie said last, which is sort of his behavior is so out of step from what I think we expected or what one might expect from a typical litigant. But I think if you understand it as not having to do with the case at all, but fitting into a broader picture, you can really understand everything he does as trying to appeal to sort of a slice of the electorate. And it explains all his behavior in court, why he was doing things that he thought would help in New Hampshire. But we also saw that a jury of nine New Yorkers last May and a jury of nine New Yorkers here sort of rejected that. And I think there was a lot of other people that rejected that. So I think it could be, hopefully, a preview of what's to come once he has to speak or try to speak to a broader audience. But I think he showed through this trial that he's not fully able to.

The other thing, for your purposes, Sarah, is the first jury. We had a very different complexion than the most recent jury. The first jury were mostly people. I think we had one person from New York City, and everyone else was from Westchester and Putnam and Orange counties. Putnam and Orange counties are pretty red. They're pretty trumpy. And we managed to even convince those, including some guy who listens to Tim Poole, to my everlasting horror when we realized. But even he voted with the jury to say that he did it, like.

In an hour, too. Right? That guy, the Tim Poole guy in his voyager, on the transcript, I think it said that he got all his news from that podcast or something like.

I mean, yeah, at the initial contest, we thought he said, temple, I'm so stupid. I thought he might have been an orthodox jew. And I was like, no, he said Tim Poole.

And you heard.

It'S on the transcript. It was incorrect. But then some journalists picked up on it, right, and said, oh, I know what that is. And that's how people sort of found out about it.

Judge Kaplan does this very fast, Sarah. So it's like, boom, boom, boom. You can barely hear what the people are saying.

That is a great little note. But when you guys are talking about Trump's behavior in the trial, actually, I think a lot of people listening don't know. What was Trump doing that you think the jury was reacting so strongly to?

Where do we begin, Matt? You started and I'll finish.

We can make this a second.

Mean a couple things. One from the get go, including in opening statements, he was sort of audibly reacting to things that our side would say that continued to when E. Jean was on the stand.

And it felt, let me get before that. When we were doing jury selection, one of the questions was, do you believe that the 2020 election was stolen? And he raised his hand.

Well, whose opinion matters after all?

It's something like someone.

Trump raised his hand when, yes, the.

Jury, of course he would. He absolutely would do that. And I don't think that's for effect. I just think he can't help himself. I think Judge Kaplan, when he said, and you can tell the story about, I don't think the guy can help himself.

Okay, that's great.

Keep going, keep going.

So that's sort of the reactions he had continued during openings into E. Jean's testimony. That's when it started. I think we started to say things to the court because we would have his statements on the screen and he would repeat them out loud so the jury could hear. He called her a whack job. He called her a con artist, sort of in front of the jury. It's a bit, I think, of not being able to help it. But he also, I think, is trying to slip in a backdoor defense of like, it's actually true. I didn't do it. I'm still sort of speaking my truth, which was sort of out of bounds for this second trial. So I think after enough of that, we said to Judge Kaplan to sort of put it on the record that he was doing these things. And this is what you're referring to, George, where Judge Kaplan eventually said something to Trump and, you know, sort of reacted strongly. Judge Kaplan said, you can't help yourself. Donald Trump says no, and he gets up, throws his hands up, walks away, and that's day two of trial. So it picked up quite quickly and.

Then combined with it was like a two man show between him. And so Haba would say things in this courtroom, Sarah, that George and I, only George and I can get this because we're the same age and we both came from big firms. The idea that any lawyer sitting in front of Judge Kaplan would say the kinds of things that she said, like every time she said it, I think my blood pressure went up.

Give me an example of what she would say.

To the very first taste, she said to him, I really don't appreciate the way you're talking to me, to the judge, to the judge, but not even in that nicely tone of voice. She was kind of yelling at him. And I literally thought I was going to have a heart attack. Not that I said it, but the stress of never knowing what she was going to say and how Judge Kaplan was going to react. He's not known as being, like, the sweetest judge out there. It was unbelievable. What kinds of things did she say, Matt? I can't even remember.

It's like when you're a kid, right? I never had siblings, but I'll bet you it's like when your sibling acts out, you're terrified for them because of what your parents are going to do, even though you are the angel, and you're just sitting there and it's like, oh, my God, you get sick. And I've had that feeling in court. Not like this, I'm sure.

And I think what she was, I think a lot of the media picked up on some of the ineffectiveness in introducing evidence and asking questions, and that at some point during trial didn't become quite as surprising. But what remains surprising is when there'd be a ruling from Judge Kaplan and he said this multiple times, that she treated it like the opening of a conversation and tried to push back after he had ruled, asked a question that he had just said she couldn't ask, but with a slightly different way.

I've seen lawyers do that. They will do that, particularly criminal defense lawyers. They will do that because sometimes you got to keep pushing a judge, but you have to be respectful when you're doing it. When you're pushing back on a judge, you have to do it respectfully. Respectfully. And her disrespect for Judge kaplan, I read large chunks of this transcript was palpable. When the court would say, you need to do this correctly. Whatever that was, she'd say, okay, sure, judge, or sure, she's talking to some.

I thought you would say that.

What you say is, yes, your honor. Thank you, your honor. Is what you say, and then you follow the instruction of the judge. Right? I mean, that's what I was always trained.

So I had another case in front of Judge kaplan where I was arguing, and I basically was saying to him, look, if you rule the way the other side wants, you should just admit that there won't be any pleading standard under this body of law. And he looked at me to look down at me, and I said, oh, immediately I was like, I withdraw that, your honor. I never should have said it. All I said is, admit there's no pleading standard. She said three dozen times a day, things so much more disrespectful than that in such a. More disrespectful tone of voice. It was, he was. When Trump was there, it was worse because he was clearly ordering her around and egging her on.

Well, this was, my question is, if Trump in the courtroom was playing for New Hampshire voters, who was she playing for? Was she doing this because she thought that's what kind of representation Trump wanted?

I think so. What do you think, Matt? Yeah, it's got to be.

And as Robbie said, the tone changed depending on whether or not she was in the room. Trump was in the room. Also, many of the objections she made came from Trump, notes that Trump passed or taps on the shoulder that Trump gave her. It wasn't driven by sort of a deep legal strategy. I think it was driven by the one man.

Let me bring you back to the first trial, because the first trial, he actually had a competent, extremely experienced, well known criminal defense lawyer. And he's a bit of a flashy guy. And he may not be my type or your type, but he was pretty good at what he did. And by the end of the trial, it seemed like just from looking at the transcript that he was kind of throwing up his hands when the judge would call him out for something his client had done and his client wasn't even in the jurisdiction. I mean, could you tell us about a little of that dynamic?

So it was much, to a much lesser extent because he wasn't there. But Trump was live tweeting during the first trial in ways that were obviously in violation of stuff that the judge had said was off limits. And it happened, what, three or four times, Matt, at least. And every time it would, it shows how the world has changed because he just did it throughout this trial. But every time it would happen, we'd raise it with the judge. The judge would call Takapina in and Takapina would kind of agree that it was inappropriate and just say, look, judge, I'm doing my best. And I actually think Judge Kaplan was sympathetic to him.

Yeah, he knew that Takapina had a client that was out of control anyway, even here, remember?

What did she say, judge Kaplan? So in the second trial, there was a discussion about what Trump could say on the stand right before he took the stand. And Judge Kaplan asked Alina, okay, what are you going to say and what are his answers going to be? And she kind of said, as I recall, something like, I can't predict. She said, I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't really tell you what his answers are going to be, John.

That's actually very honest of her because you never know what's going to come out of that man's brain and then therefore out of his mouth.

But then if he was the one egging, I mean, it seems like, once again, we're firing people via tweet knockoffs. But so it seems like he is parting ways with her, that she will no longer be his counsel. So how can he be mad at her if she kind of did what he wanted in terms of that performance?

Because it's all about money, my friend. For him, it's all about the money.

And it's never his fault. Nothing is never his fault, right? Ask anybody who worked for him in the Trump administration. Right?

I have never with him. It has not escaped me because this podcast is about me asking lawyers to explain things. Practically speaking, how does a jury decide damages in a case like this? And as I'm listening to you guys, I'm thinking, did he cost himself $83 million by just being such a jerk? How much of it actually had to do with her case? And how much of it had to do with the fact that they just decided? And this goes to your political point, man, I really hate this jerk, and.

I want to make him pay 65 million of the 83 was. He's being a jerk.

Yeah, he actually got off easy. I think in some ways the 88.3 is just a remarkable achievement, but they could have made it a lot worse, and it would still have been sustained on appeal for this guy. Because I think you really don't get into appellate courts cutting back punitive damages award unless you get to like eight or nine or ten times the compensatories. And here the compensatories were, I think, understandably on the order of $20 million compared to the 3 million in the first case, because these were the first lies that he told. And he told them, he used the bully pulpit to tell these lies. He was president at the time, and those amplified the effect of his lies. So this guy could have easily, I mean, they could have gone five times, I think this verdict could. He actually was lucky that this verdict wasn't 100 or 120,000,000.

Do you guys agree with that? Were you not surprised to see such an unbelievable sum of money awarded?

Go ahead, Matt.

I can say for myself, I think we would never have said a number that high out loud, but I think we believe strongly that punitives in this case had a lot more work to do than perhaps in the typical case. And given sort of the ramp up of lies and defamation that occurred from the first trial through the second, I think we all felt very strongly that it should be a very high punitive award. It's just tough to know exactly what a jury is going to do. And we didn't put a number on.

It for the jury.

We had given them sort of targets or ranges for the two components of the compensatory damages, but didn't say anything about punitives. And in the first case, the punitives that the jury awarded were much smaller than compensatory. It was tough to expect anything. I think we were very happy with the result.

We should be very happy and should be very proud. It's amazing. But let me say, I think my friend Shanlin Wu, who is a commentator, a former Justice Department lawyer and a legal commentator for CNN, I think he wrote something for, I think it was the Daily Beast. And he made the point, like, Trump is lucky this case didn't get to the jury on a Monday or a Tuesday, because his theory was they could have gone higher, and they probably just sort of settled on 65 because they didn't want to come back on Monday. So that's pure speculation. But it's just. But the point really is there's no way that this verdict gets overturned as excessive. It's just never going to happen. And I don't know what. There's no reversible error anywhere I can think of. And he can go interview 100 lawyers, if he can find one will work for him. And I think these verdicts are bulletproof.

Can you explain to me, because we put out a thing saying, ask George and send us your. This is ask Robbie and everybody sent in this question for you guys, which is, is he going to have to pay these damages?

Oh, great question.

The short answer is yes. The more interesting question is, what's going to happen in the near term. So within the next 45 to 60 days, if he wants us to not be able to collect while he's appealing, which is standard in a civil case like this, he either has to post a bond, which would require him to put 20% down, or he has to do what he did last time, which is the first time I've ever seen anyone do this, which is put the entire amount on deposit with the court.

Which means that Eugene is guaranteed to get that money, correct? Absolutely. If it's affirmed that money in the court account gets dispersed to her.

He had that money.

He has a 5.5.

Oh, that money.

Yeah.

I don't know where. There's something, I think I read that it might have come from the Trump corporation. I don't know. I mean, there's some issue with that. But I'm not going to elaborate because I haven't done the research. I always do research first.

Okay, so she gets that 5 billion. But what about the rest of to.

If he wants to appeal, he's going to have to do something similar. Where he's going to get the money from Sarah, I have no idea. But otherwise, he's going to have to allow us to start trying to.

So much money. We have so much money.

Right. It's hard for him to say. He said in the ag deposition that they had $400 million in cash at the trump.org.

And, you know, he's always telling the truth.

Well, that's good news.

Okay. Speaking of hundreds of millions of dollars, I want to talk about the other case that you have, because people have not focused on this other case that you have. The case that, as I mentioned before, got me just cavelling over. Robbie, tell us about that one. And when is it going to go.

To trial, the ACN case?

We're on appeal now. Sadly, it's a ways off. Yeah. So this case is really, I mean, again, it's kind of another classic example of the way he behaved. So at a certain point, Trump, as everyone knows, couldn't really do real estate projects in New York because it requires banks to lend you a lot of money, and they weren't willing to do that. And he had the brilliant, truly brilliant, I have to say, idea that he could basically make money by marketing himself. And one of the first things he did in that regard was to promote this very scuzzy multi level marketing scheme called ACN, or American communications Network, which appealed to very kind of generally poor working class people. This is where I think he got the taste for the rallies. They would come to these big stadiums to hear him speak, and he would say kind of a spectrum of lies ranging from, I know investments, I know real estate, this is a better investment than real estate, to I did a lot of due diligence, and this company is great to my all time favorite, which is people think I'm just doing this for the money, but I just really like the company.

Oh, God. What is a multilevel marketing scheme for those of us not familiar, those people out there not familiar with this highly advanced form of fraudulent behavior.

So it's basically a pyramid scheme. Even among pyramid scheme experts, this one is considered to be among the worst. And he had these people on celebrity Apprentice twice. We got the outtakes for both episodes. We also deposed some of the celebrities who were on. And suffice it to say, it's all quite eye opening, to say the least. We are on appeal now because the judge wouldn't certify a class and then she dismissed it without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction. We're just going to appeal it and hopefully come back soon.

Let me ask you. So you ended up taking his deposition in that case as well as the carol case, and I think you ended up taking them almost back to back, one week apart to the know, one of the things that litigators like to do, and they will do it for the rest of their lives, is tell war stories. That must have been a trip.

I want to hear the deposition stories.

By saying they weren't supposed to be a week apart. The first deposition was supposed to be earlier in this ACN case, but there was. Remember that big hurricane in Florida? The big hurricane was coming to Florida. We wrote them and said, look, maybe we should just do this at Bedminster, guys. Like, there's a huge hurricane coming to Florida. And they were. No, no. And then as the hurricane's approaching, they shut down everything in Florida. They still insist that we have to come to mar a Lago the day after the hurricane to do the deposition. We finally write a letter to the judge saying, judge, I'm really sorry, but this is how the tornado looked. We got it, like, on the doppler. My partner, John Quinn, put a picture in the letter of the hurricane.

Did you embellish it with a sharpie?

And so the judge said, obviously, you don't have to fly to Florida today. And it was postponed. And it was postponed until the week before. The other one, first of all, was in a very different. They were in different places. The first one was in that big ballroom. Maybe not be the biggest ballroom, but the ballroom where you see all the boxes of docs of documents.

That's where it was, the famous ballroom.

My gosh. They didn't have any smaller rooms for a deposition.

You needed to be in the ballroom.

Wasn't that also the room where he physically assaulted one of your witnesses?

No, I think that was the. I don't think so.

Yeah, that was the other thing they had going for him, is the pattern.

My gosh. Hold on.

You got to tell all these.

Tell them all. So at the first deposition, and it was a very different style of deposition, because in the first deposition, I had all the evidence. I had him saying these lies on video. I had him signing the documents. I had receipt of all these millions of dollars to him from his company. And so it was just really confirming the evidence. And he realized, as the case went on, that kind of, we had the goods on him, and he got increasingly unhappy as the deposition went on. He kept saying, as I recall, that it was like Tom Cruise selling the car, and then you're in a car crash and you sue Tom Cruise. What I didn't say back to him is, that would be true if Tom Cruise had an advertisement to sell a car. And he said, it has the best airbags in the industry, and then there was an accident, and the airbags didn't exist. That's the kind of lie that Trump told, in which case you could sue Tom Cruise.

Right?

So he's just getting increasingly irked during the deposition. We're about midish morning 1130 or so. And I say something like, I didn't know what to call him, so I decided on sir. So I said, sir, I just have one more topic I want to cover, and then we'll break for lunch, if that's okay with you. And he looked at me and he said, well, why do we have to break for lunch? Let's just go straight through. This is a waste of my time. And I said, well, I'm sorry. I would do that, but we have a core reporter, we have videographer. They're entitled to a lunch break. We have to break for lunch. And then you could kind of see the wheel spinning in his brain. You could really almost see it. And he said, well, you're here in Mar a Lago. What do you think you're going to do for lunch? Where are you going to get lunch? And so I said to, you know, I raised this question with your attorneys yesterday, sir, and they graciously offered to provide us with lunch, at which point there was a huge pile of documents, exhibits sitting in front of him.

And he took the pile and he just threw it across the table because.

He was mad you were going to.

Eat lunch because they'd offered us a free lunch at Mar a Lago.

Yeah, right. And this is something, Sarah. I mean, I don't know if you've ever had a deposition taken or attended one.

I have no legal.

So when you host a deposition, whether it be at your law offices or at your clients offices or any place, it is customary to order lunch and get your adversaries a separate conference room where they can eat that lunch and do whatever they need to do during lunch and talk privately, and then you have your own conference room where you eat lunch with your client and so on. It is standard operating procedure very civil. Very civil. And he flipped out that his lawyers.

Had done Alina for that. He was so mad at Alina.

Yeah.

Well, I hope those weren't nuclear secrets.

Well, there was no ketchup. Fortunately, the ketchup had not yet been delivered, so it did not smear the pores apart.

Then he came back in, and he said, well, how'd you like the lunch? And I said, well, sir, I had a banana. I've never really eaten when I'm taking testimony. And he said, well, I told you. It was kind of charming. He said, I told them to make you really bad sandwiches, but they can't help themselves. Here we have the best sandwiches.

You can be funny. There's no question about it.

Well, you know what? One part that I saw that I did not think was funny was when he was asked, he was doing the whole, like, when they're a star, they let you do it. That was a wild thing to catch on.

Tell us about that. And the photograph story about the deposition that deplated at the first trial.

Let me get you there. So I'm still at the fraud deposition. We go through. We end about 04:00 in the afternoon, and we come in the room and I say, I'm done asking questions. And immediately I hear from the other side. Off the record. Off the record. Off the record. So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table, and he says, see you next Tuesday for the second deposition.

Was the deposition on a Tuesday, council?

No, I don't think it was. We'll look it up, but I don't think it was. And I, thank God, had no idea what that meant. So I said to him, what are you talking about? I'm coming back on Wednesday. Literally, it was an honest answer. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then we get into the car. Did he respond?

Wait, did he laugh?

But they said, sort of like in a deliberate way, right?

Yeah. You could tell it was like a kind of a joke again, like teenage boys would come up with.

Yeah, that is a teenage boy level joke.

Yeah, I wasn't on the jokes. I had no idea. Then we get into the car, and my colleagues are like, robbie, do you know what that means? And I'm like, no, what are you talking about? They tell me. And I'm like, oh, my God. Thank God. I didn't know, because had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry. There's no question I would have gotten angry, and I didn't because I didn't know. So I was super polite, and I looked like I was being above it all, which I wasn't. I just didn't.

That's just an amazing story.

We come back the next Wednesday for the deposition in Carol. And that was very different on that deposition. I really just wanted him to talk. I mean, I just knew that he was going to say crazy things. And the only thing I needed to accomplish was I wanted him to confirm that his theory of the case was. Never met her, never happened. Right. I wanted to make sure that that's what I was defending against, or that's what I was prosecuting my case against at trial. We're pretty early in the morning, and Matt, you should say what you remember. And he starts to talk about. I'm kind of getting him to confirm this defamatory statements he made. And he. Yeah, you know, they showed me a photo where we were together, and I wasn't really trying to be a trickster at all. I said, oh, I think I have a copy of that photo. Let me show you. We pull it out, and I said, is this the photo? And he starts to look at it, and he literally points at E. Jean and says, that's Marla.

I don't even know who the woman. Let's see. I don't know who. It's Marla.

You're saying marla's in this photo?

That's Marla? Yeah, that's my wife.

Which woman are you pointing to?

No, here, Carol.

The person you just pointed to was Carol. And I was so shocked, I said, what did you just say? And he said. I said, that's Marla. And I was like, sir, that's Eugene Carroll. You just pointed at EJean Carroll. Then Haba took her a little bit, but she realized that was a big problem. Pointed out to him that it was Ejeane Carroll. And he. Yeah, yeah. And then here's the classic trump. Then he. Yeah, yeah, the photo was blurry, which I used in both my jury closings, because that photo was not blurry at all.

And then, remember, his statements to the public were, she's not my type.

Yeah, right.

And he's identifying this gorgeous woman in the photograph, who happens to be Eugene Garroll as his wife.

Later in the deposition, I said to him, I take it all your wives are your type. And he said, oh, yeah.

She'S smart.

That was, I think, the hardest moment I've ever had in a deposition, just to sort of and not react, but you sort of know what just happened. You can't sort of show, and you.

Can'T believe it just happened. And you're just like, do you have to do the poker face thing?

We had lunch right after that day. They provided lunch. There were no complaints. And we were so happy at that lunch. Remember, Matt?

Yeah, you must have been.

But that was actually, there was two moments during the deposition where we really had to, I think, play it cool. The first was the misidentification, but the second was in the afternoon when we played the access Hollywood tape in. His sort of response to the access Hollywood tape is, fortunately or unfortunately, that's the way it is.

And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the. You can do anything. That's what you said, correct?

Well, historically, that's true with stars.

It's true with stars that they can grab women by the.

Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.

And you consider yourself to be a star?

I think you can say that, yeah.

And when we heard that fortunately, stars.

Have been able to do that for millions of years, it was like since.

Time immemorium, stars have done this since.

The cavemen that did not help him before even his virtual presence at the first trial via this deposition video that helped lose him that first trial, big time.

So I take it you consider yourself to be a star. And he said, oh, yes. And then on top of that, he insulted ejean a million times. He told me I wasn't his type either. Oh, that must have really depressed about that. He said he was going to sue me very strongly.

Very strongly. We're going to sue you so strongly. No one has ever been sued like the way we're going to sue you. Many people are saying, people say, sir, you should sue this woman strongly.

You said this thing before, though, about how he is kind of funny, because I think this is an underappreciated point. I'm sort of constantly trying to explain this to reporters or even to Democrats who are like, but he's so essentially repellent, which can be true, along with the fact that he is almost charming in his own way and is funny. Like when you said the thing about who thinks the election was stolen in 2020, he raised his hand. I would have laughed out loud in court if he did that.

But the thing about him is he's funny sometimes without really knowing that he's being funny.

Well, that's sort of my question. How self aware is he about how he's being or is it like he's funny in the way that he is a 78 year old man who acts like a 15 year old boy. And so that is just funny? Or is he very cognizant of how he's engaging with people and has sort of a lizard brain understanding of how to play to people?

I think it's both. Honestly. I think it's both.

I do think that in certain ways, he has more control over himself than he's sometimes given credit for. And I think it's telling that from June 2019 until October 2022, he didn't say a single thing publicly about Eugene while the case was going on. He then, right before his deposition, after he had moved unsuccessfully for a stay and it was denied, he reacted and lashed out on true social and then was quiet again until the trial. And then since then, I think it's been in his interest just to sort of ignore any sort of concept of preserving whatever he wanted to preserve for the court case and just go off. And so I think the fact that he stayed quiet for two and a half years, I think, shows that he's able to.

I'm going to dissent a little from that view. You actually sat in the room with him all that time. So absolutely, that's worth a lot, but he can't help himself. He's like a fire hose. Okay? And it just sort of goes in one direction and it goes off in another direction. And he's very, very impulsive. And once you get on his radar screen enough or at a certain moment, it just comes out, he's got a fire, he just sort of launches in a direction. And I think when these cases reach critical moments, at certain point, he obsesses about them and then he goes wild. And usually, sometimes it's at two in the morning, but that's separates. Yeah, I think that's part of what we saw here. I don't think it's calculated, and I don't think he's showing restraint. He's got so many things that he's outraged about that he does from time to time, move on. And that's what I think we're seeing now. As much as obviously the $88.3 million has had an impact, but I think he's got other problems. He's got 91 problems, as I like to say.

And jail is one.

At one point in the first deposition, my partner, John Quinn, not the famous John Quinn, I call him the good John Quinn, coughed.

Only New York lawyers will and Los.

Angeles lawyers will get that over my head.

Yeah, no, this is a legal industry joke.

But, yeah, off during the deposition, and Trump was like, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you vaccinated? And I was remember trying to think like, is he pro vaccination? What's he going to want? And John's like, yes, I'm vaccinated. And I said, yes, we're all vaccinated, sir. And then he was very proud. We had a whole little conversation about how proud he was. He kind of took credit for the vaccines. No.

Operation War of speed. It's like the one good thing he did in his administration. And it's the one thing Ron DeSantis spent the whole time.

No, it's crazy. It's crazy. I would give him credit for that, too. I give him credit for that, and I give him credit for getting us out of, basically trying to get us out of Afghanistan.

But anyway, okay.

Because I don't know, are there any other great war stories that you guys can tell about this?

What about the trial? What am I missing from the trials?

We didn't actually get to it, I think, yet. But I think the most sort of telling moment of his orientation toward the process and the trial is when, during Robbie's closing, he just walked out, which I've never seen before. I think most judges wouldn't let someone walk out, but he stood up and walked out the door.

I get the feeling that Kaplan was kind of letting him hang himself on his own rope in that regard, instead of any other civil defendant did that. He would have in leg irons. He would have had the marshals put him back in his seat or something. He just let him hang himself there, I would imagine.

How did the judge react? I mean, you guys have said Judge Kaplan is stern and kind of no nonsense, but you've got a former president in your courtroom and a jury, and which I think could create sort of a weird power dynamic. The judge, it's his space, but Trump is used to everything being his space. And so what was the vibe like between them?

I think Eugene characterizes very well. I think what really came across is Trump looked very small in that lower. He was physically lower than the judge because the judge is sitting up on the bench. Judge Kaplan is at least as big a man as Trump is. He really maintained order and decorum in the court to the extent he could. And when people misbehaved, they didn't do it for very long. I mean, on the one hand, Trump doesn't follow the rules. On the other hand, he did follow the rules to the extent when Kaplan reprimanded him. He stopped, at least for a time. And so what became clear? Ejean says, the emperor has no stop. I I know, know, because I can't imagine it. But he did feel about that way. He did look and feel small, I think. Yeah, he thought it was going to be like a maga rally, and it was going to be great for him being there. I think it was exactly the opposite.

What did his face look like when the verdict came down?

Oh, he had left. That's the one time he left. He left about an hour before.

I think he just wasn't there to hear the verdict get read.

Correct.

I didn't know you could do that.

Don't.

I mean, I guess in my law and order brain, I'm like, doesn't he have to stand there at the table while the judge?

Sort of more like a criminal thing. But, yeah, you do.

Sorry, dude, you owe.

Normally, if you're sitting there in the trial, that's what you're there for, to see the verdict. I mean, how could you miss that? I guess if you're about to get hammered.

All right, well, fine.

What about Hava? It wasn't that long a wait.

I mean, it was the jury that was really was. They were ordering.

What did your face look like then? Like, how shocked were you?

Let's see your happy face with the verdict.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. We were, like, holding hands with E. Jean. It was mean. On the one hand, I agree with everything George has said, that it could have been a much higher verdict and still been sustained on appeal. On the other hand, I always kind of expect the worst. So I have to say, oh, here was. There's this great moment where the judge's longtime deputy said, judge, do you mind if I ask a question about the verdict form? And Judge Kaplan was like, fine. And so the clerk said, his name is Mr. Mohan, said to the four person, what does the m mean, the letter m mean on this verdict form? And the woman who was the four person said, it means million.

Oh, wow. What a moment.

You wrote a piece for the Atlantic that you said, like, what did you say? You wrote that your tears welled up in your eyes.

I was watching it.

When you heard the word that, it hit you so hard.

I was watching. All of a sudden, I was in Florida for a field hockey tournament that my daughter was in, and we were done for the day, and I was tired, and I was sitting in my hotel room and wondering, like, when's this going to come down? All of a sudden, it's verdict time. I turn on the tv. And I'm watching Lisa Rubin on MSNBC, who is just like, she was so just stressed out in the moments before the verdict came out because it was such a moment. And then when I saw the numbers on my phone or heard it on the tv, it was like I was in tears. I was in tears. It was like a big, strong man with tears. No, seriously, it was just like, wow. I found it quite emotional. And this is a case where my involvement consisted of a single moment in time, email, and I was more emotionally invested in this case than any case, including the one I got took to the Supreme Court. These business cases, this was so special and about something so much more than dollars and cents. And it was about this brave woman who was willing to stand up to this guy.

Too.

Brooke, I lose the ability to speak when I think about it.

I think one of the reasons that stuff like this can feel profoundly good is because we have been living through now for seven years, just a total absence of accountability. Absolutely right. There just like, aren't many moments when you get the chance to say, no, somebody said, this was wrong, the behavior is bad, and you were going to face a consequence for it. And I think the fact that you guys got to be part of one of the just absolute rarest moments of accountability, that's got to feel really good.

Let's just hope he has many more.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Let's hope it's the first.

I want to change the subject. Know I'm going to be Donald Trump for a second. I'm going to change the subject back to, you mean, I got the impression, like the first trial, particularly in the first trial, that they were kind of obsessed with me, and they kept bringing, and there was one point where they put up a slide. They were going to use a slide in a summation. The judge was like, what the WTF? Get rid of Kaplan. What was Kaplan thinking when he kept this weird drumbeat of how Eugene Carroll got to bring this lawsuit?

Because their defense was kind of like a QAnon conspiracy theory, right? Their defense was you and me. George got together somehow with Lisa Bernbach and Kara Martin and Eugene Carroll, and we all decided to concoct this lie to get at Donald Trump. That was their theory. That's all they had. Matt, is that how you see it?

Yeah. And I think if you.

That makes you feel so good inside.

I have to say, terrible story to concoct. As Robbie said earlier, it just never made any sense. But I think, as Robbie said, they.

Were grasping a bit amazing. Just amazing. From beginning, what you guys accomplished mean to just sort of stick with it and to just barrel through and do what needed to be done and to do it so unbelievably, incredibly, skillfully can't. I can't tell you how much I admire what you guys did.

Well, thank you, George.

Thank you.

Which feels better, winning this case against Trump or getting gay marriage for the entire country?

People aren't going to like my answer. And maybe just because we're living in the here and now, this case against Donald Trump.

Why, that's fascinating.

Because this case, because I've spent my whole life, George, is going to. I'm going to get reclaimed, as I tell this, I've spent my whole life devoted to the principle that we have a rule of law and we have a judicial system that works, and that's what makes us a constitutional democracy. That, at least until recently, was to be admired worldwide. And it was starting. I mean, it is in times looking like that may not be true. And this case validated that at least as of now, we still have all that.

Thank you. Now I'm going to get weepy again.

I don't know, we might just stop before everyone's crying.

Thank you. I mean, thank you so much.

Well, this has been really amazing. An incredible conversation.

Incredible. What you guys clear? Edie Windsor was very important. I don't want to offend anyone. It was super important. I'm married. It's important to my family, too. But as I think I said somewhere else, you can't have equal rights for gay people or for women if you don't have a rule of.

That'S. We can argue about all sorts of things, right? You can argue about tax cuts and this and that and everything that. We have these processes in place to decide whether in Congress or the courts. And this one thing, everybody has an interest in this in a way that too few people, I think, understand.

Yeah. I mean, even thinking about the question I just asked, the fact is, being able to get married and being able to raise my family has been essential to me. But the world that my kids are going to grow up in is also in the country. They're going to grow up in matters a great deal. And that's a big part of why I think everybody is doing the things that they're doing right now. All right, guys, we're going to let you go. Thank you so much.

You, our.