Trump Lawyer Joe Tacopina Branded ‘Terrible’ After Making ‘Mighty Big Mistakes’ in Cross-examination of E. Jean Carroll
May 2 2023, Published 9:10 a.m. ET
Donald Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, was branded “terrible” this week after he failed to properly cross-examine Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In the latest development to come after Carroll’s sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against the former president officially went to trial last week, Tacopina reportedly made a series of “mighty big mistakes” while questioning Trump’s accuser under oath on Monday.
Even more surprising was the fact that Tacopina filed a motion for a mistrial before the hearing even started on Monday – a motion that Judge Lewis Kaplan immediately denied.
According to trial attorney and Daily Beast reporter Mitchell Epner, Trump’s lawyer failed to properly cross-examine Carroll for a few reasons.
The first was because Tacopina repeatedly reinforced Carroll’s testimony that Trump raped her in a New York City department store dressing room in 1996.
While a good lawyer would successfully argue why previous testimony “had to be false,” Tacopina instead provided Carroll with a number of opportunities to repeat her allegations against Trump, according to Epner.
Tacopina also reportedly failed to debunk Carroll’s testimony because he had nothing to debunk her allegations with.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyer reportedly asked Carroll a number of questions despite not knowing the answers to the questions he was asking – a move that Epner dubbed a “cardinal sin” in cross-examination.
For example, Tacopina reportedly questioned Carroll about a Saturday Night Live skit she wrote for the show in the mid-1980s despite Tacopina knowing “nothing about” the skit.
Trump’s lawyer then asked Carroll about a series of text messages she exchanged with a woman named Carol Martin, while the text message exchange was actually with Martin’s daughter, Courtney.
Finally, Tacopina reportedly “lost control” of the courtroom during his cross-examination of Carroll on Monday.
Despite questioning Trump’s accuser for roughly eight hours, Epner believes Tacopina only scored “about five minutes” of “strong” cross-examination.
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Tacopina’s five minutes of strong cross-examination reportedly came when he successfully got Carroll to admit that her alleged rape by Trump was not the reason she never had sex again after the incident.
“Well, after the episode in Bergdorf’s, I never had sex again, but I think it wasn’t because of him,” Carroll said in a podcast recorded prior to this week’s trial. “I think it was I just didn’t have the luck to meet that person who would be desirous again.”
