Judge Lewis Kaplan purposefully did not disclose why he advised jurors to keep their identities secret in the high profile case
After the verdict was read in the defamation trial between writer E Jean Carroll and former president Donald Trump, the judge overseeing the trial suggested the jurors never reveal their identities.
At the end of the two-week trial, the jurors, who were purposefully made anonymous due to the high-profile nature of the case, are now free to identify themselves by name if they wish.
“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” Judge Lewis Kaplan advised them in the courtroom.
Judge Kaplan did not explicitly explain why he was offering the advice, however, previous legal actions against the ex-president have led to threats of violence against both jurors and judges from Trump supporters.
I swear in a hundred years there will be arguments in every history class about whether his entire political career was even real or some kind of parable to frighten young people into voting.
About 20 years ago, I used to work with an older dude who was just on the verge of retirement. That guy hated Nixon. He would occasionally go on rants about how much of a piece of shit ol’ Tricky Dick was. But at the time, Nixon was 30 years removed from office, and all that shit happened before I was born. So I just kind of blew it off as an over-exaggeration of this one dude.
But yeah, in about 25-30 years, we’ll be talking to kids in their 20s trying to explain the complete and utter shit-stain that was Donald Trump. And they’ll humor us, but mostly they’ll just be thinking “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. The guy was elected president after all.”