With legal cases flying around the Trumps like a blender set on “Cocaine,” another case that’s been flying under the radar is the latest lawsuit E. Jean Carroll filed seeking additional damages against Donald Trump. In an otherwise routine filing announcing that the jury in the case (as well as the pool of potential jurors) will have their identities protected–a filing so routine even Trump’s lawyers didn’t file a single motion regarding it–Judge Lewis Kaplan again noted something other judges apparently fail to acknowledge: when Donald Trump attacks people with words, his followers will attack them physically:
For the reasons stated in the Court’s decision ordering the use of an anonymous jury in the trial of a closely related second case, Carroll v. Trump, the Court finds that “[i]f jurors’ identities [in the trial of this case] were disclosed, there would be a strong likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or harassment or worse by supporters of Mr. Trump and/or by Mr. Trump himself. Indeed, in the very recent past, Mr. Trump has been fined twice for violating a gag order issued by a New York judge in response to comments made by Mr. Trump in relation to the judge’s clerk. In view of Mr. Trump’s repeated public statements with respect to the plaintiff and court in this case as well as in other cases against him, and the extensive media coverage that this case already has received and that is likely to increase once the trial is imminent or underway, the Court finds that there is strong reason to believe the jury requires the protections prescribed below.