US Politics

A partisan showdown was on display on Tuesday as House Republicans attempted to escalate immigration and border issues on two fronts.Republicans moved forward with efforts to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, as they lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, in a split-screen that Democrats criticized as hypocritical.A House committee convened on Tuesday to consider two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, who attacked Republicans’ accusations against him as “false”, “baseless” and “inaccurate”.In a letter sent to the Republican chair of the House committee on homeland security just hours before the markup hearing began, Mayorkas dismissed the impeachment process as “politically motivated”. House Republicans have presented no clear evidence that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the requirement for impeachment, but their resolution accuses the cabinet secretary of refusing to comply with the law and breaching public trust.“I have been privileged to serve our country for most of my professional life. I have adhered scrupulously and fervently to the oath of office I have taken six times in my public service career,” Mayorkas wrote in his letter. “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”The Republican chair of the committee, Mark Green of Tennessee, criticized Mayorkas’s letter as a woefully inadequate response to concerns about the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“This 11th-hour response demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Secretary Mayorkas views his responsibilities,” Green said in his opening statement at the markup hearing. “We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.”Democrats retorted that Republicans were making a farce out of the impeachment process by rushing to oust a cabinet official without evidence of wrongdoing.“We’re here based on two completely fabricated, unsupported and never used before articles of impeachment,” Dan Goldman, a Democrat of New York, said at the hearing. “This is completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.”The Republican-controlled committee is expected to advance the resolution, and the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that the full chamber will vote on impeaching Mayorkas in the coming days. Even if the resolution passes the House, it will certainly fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.To demonstrate his scorn over the proceedings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, introduced several procedural motions to delay the progress of the hearing. Thompson accused Republicans of attempting to impeach Mayorkas to boost the political prospects of Donald Trump, who is widely expected to win his party’s presidential nomination.“If House Republicans were serious about improving conditions along the border, they would provide the department the funding necessary to do so. They have not,” Thompson said in his opening statement. “They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions. They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president. The extreme Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans who are running the House of Representatives are deeply unserious people.”While the House moves forward with impeaching Mayorkas, Trump has called on Republicans to sink the bipartisan border and national security deal. Johnson has said that the proposal, which would grant Joe Biden the authority to shut down the border between ports of entry when attempted crossings increase to a certain level, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a press conference held on Tuesday, Johnson dismissed claims that House Republicans were doing Trump’s bidding as “absurd” and insisted they were focused on addressing the situation at the border.“Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people. The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens. We’re not doing that under President Biden,” Johnson said. “Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”The White House then attacked Johnson for flip-flopping on the passage of a bipartisan immigration bill, noting that the speaker previously called on members of both parties to “come together and address the broken border”.“Today, Speaker Johnson claimed he believes action should be taken to secure the border,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “That’s exactly what President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are doing. Speaker Johnson should join them.”Speaking on the House floor, Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts, mocked Republicans’ assertions that they were entirely focused on policy concerns and emphasized the challenges of the current divided Congress. While Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House, Democrats control both the Senate and the White House.“I will say to my Republican friends: you are not in control of everything. You don’t have a dictatorship,” McGovern said. “If you want to get something done, we’re going to have to compromise.” More

The congresswoman Cori Bush has confirmed that the US Department of Justice is investigating whether the Missouri Democrat misused campaign funds for security services, an accusation she denied as “simply false”.In a statement, Bush said her campaign was “fully cooperating” with the investigation and said she had always “complied with all applicable laws and House rules”.“I hold myself, my campaign, and my position to the highest levels of integrity. I also believe in transparency, which is why I can confirm that the Department of Justice is reviewing my campaign’s spending on security services,” said Bush, part of a progressive group of Democratic women known as “the Squad”.She added that the allegations were rooted in “baseless complaints” raised by rightwing organizations who have long made her a target.In a lengthy statement, Bush, a nurse and Black Lives Matter activist turned lawmaker who represents the St Louis area, said she has endured threats to her “physical safety and life” since before she took office in 2021.Bush said that as a rank-and-file member of Congress she is not entitled to receive security protection by the House and has instead used campaign funds to pay for security services.“I have not used any federal tax dollars for personal security services,” she said. “Any reporting that I have used federal funds for personal security is simply false.”At issue, the congresswoman continued, was her decision to hire her husband, Cortney Merritts, to provide her with security services. She paid a total of $62,359 to Merritts for security services in 2022 before the pair were married, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.“In particular, the nature of these allegations have been around my husband’s role on the campaign,” she said.“In accordance with all applicable rules, I retained my husband as part of my security team to provide security services because he has had extensive experience in this area, and is able to provide the necessary services at or below a fair market rate.”She said that the Office of Congressional Ethics had investigated the matter last year and voted to dismiss the allegations.“In September of last year, after conducting a months-long investigation, the Office of Congressional Ethics found no wrongdoing and voted unanimously to dismiss the case,” she wrote.“I look forward to this same outcome from all pending investigations.”The department has subpoenaed the House sergeant at arms, the chamber’s top law enforcement official, for records relating to the alleged misspending, according to six sources with knowledge about the investigation, Punchbowl reported.Bush became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress, after her 2020 victory against the 10-term representative Lacy Clay. She held an event on Saturday to kick off her latest re-election campaign.Bush said: “I am under no illusion that these rightwing organizations will stop politicizing and pursuing efforts to attack me and the work that the people of St Louis sent me to Congress to do: to lead boldly, to legislate change my constituents can feel, and to save lives.” More

The Illinois board of elections has voted unanimously to keep Donald Trump on its primary ballot, rejecting objections brought by voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility on grounds that he had aided in insurrection on January 6.The decision was made on narrow procedural grounds, and is almost certain to be appealed. It is just the latest in a mixed series of official rulings on whether Trump can appear on the ballot amid a wave of challenges to his candidacy in multiple states.Officials in Colorado and Maine have ruled that Trump cannot appear on their ballots, though those decisions are facing further legal challenges, while Illinois becomes the latest state where officials have rejected attempts to boot Trump from the ballot.The US supreme court has scheduled oral arguments on this question for next week, and will likely have the final say on whether Trump is constitutionally ineligible to run for president because of his actions leading up to the January 6 attack at the US Capitol.At issue in this particular case was the question of whether or not the board of elections has the authority and jurisdiction to interpret constitutional questions. Matthew Piers, an attorney representing the objectors, argued the board “not only has the authority to determine an objection based on the United States constitution, but indeed you have the clear mandatory duty to do so”.Adam Merrill, Trump’s counsel, flatly denied Trump had participated in insurrection and argued the elections board could not make a determination on the question anyway.One Republican member of the bipartisan board made it clear that her decision was based on the question of whether the state board had the authority to weigh in on this question, not on whether Trump should be disqualified.“I want it to be clear that this Republican believes there was an insurrection on January 6,” declared GOP board member Catherine McCrory. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on January 6. However, having said that, it is not my place to rule on that today.”The Illinois petitioners calling for Trump to be excluded from the Illinois ballot argued he is disqualified from office given article 3 of the 14th amendment, which states that any public official who has taken an oath of allegiance to the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or given “aid or comfort” to its enemies must be disqualified from running for office again.In their 87-page petition, the Illinois voters said the January 6 attack was insurrectionary – and that “the effort to overthrow the results of the 2020 election by unlawful means” amounted to rebellion.On 28 January, Clark Erickson, a hearing officer for the board of elections tasked with evaluating the ballot challenge, said he agreed that Trump had committed insurrection and should be disqualified from appearing on the ballot – but that the matter should be left to a higher court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe attorney representing the challengers seeking to remove Trump from the ballot indicated immediately after the decision that the petitioners would appeal it in court.Petitioners in more than a dozen states have invoked the 14th amendment to attempt to bar Trump from the ballot in 2024 on grounds that his involvement with the January 6 insurrection disqualifies him from office. Ratified in the wake of the civil war, the 14th amendment also establishes birthright citizenship and guarantees everyone in the US “equal protection” under the law.Trump’s lawyers have asked the US supreme court to put a “swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts”, which, they argued, “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans”.The Trump campaign has similarly argued the push to disqualify him from ballots across the US amounts to an unfair and anti-democratic campaign by his detractors. More

E Jean Carroll says the $83.3m awarded to her in her defamation case against Donald Trump shows “we don’t need to be afraid” of the former president.“It was an astonishing discovery for me – he’s nothing,” Carroll said on Monday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. Comparing Trump to “a walrus snorting” and “a rhino flopping his hands”, the former Elle magazine columnist added: “He can be knocked down.”The jury in Carroll’s case against Trump in federal court in New York decided on Friday that she deserved $65m and $18.3m in punitive and compensatory damages, respectively, after defamatory statements the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee made against her over allegations that he sexually abused her.Those damages were in addition to an award of about $10m against Trump in May, when another jury held the ex-president liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.Carroll spent Monday making the rounds on the national media circuit, first appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America and pledging to give money from her judgment to something Trump “hates”, such as “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by him”.She also said on Good Morning America that she was terrified to confront Trump in open court alongside her attorney but ultimately came to realize that he was like “an emperor without clothes”.Carroll revisited that theme in her later conversation on Maddow’s show.“Three, four days before trial, I had an actual breakdown,” Carroll told Maddow. “I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t go on … That’s how frightened I was.”But Carroll reiterated her imagination was worse than anything she encountered.“Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing,” Carroll said to Maddow. “He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing.”Carroll also joked to Maddow that she would take her shopping for a new wardrobe and buy her a penthouse with some of the money Trump had been ordered to pay up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere on Friday, Trump went on Truth Social after the decision came down and fumed about how the US court system was “out of control”.He also said he intended to appeal the verdict awarded to Carroll, which came in the middle of his legal problems seemingly multiplying.Not only has other civil litigation in New York put his business practices under scrutiny, he is also facing more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions. Some of those charges include attempting to forcibly overturn the results of the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after his presidency, and giving hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.Carroll and her lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said on Monday on Good Morning America that they were confident they would collect Friday’s judgment against Trump.“I think we planted our flag,” Carroll added on MSNBC. “I think we’ve made a statement that things are going to be different – that there is going to be a new way of doing this in this country.” More

The will of the people expressed in free elections and the rule of law upheld by independent courts are two of the pillars of a liberal democracy, or so we were taught at school. Yet these two core principles keep colliding in increasingly polarised societies from Washington to London, Paris to Berlin and Warsaw to Jerusalem, with populist politicians demanding that “the will of the people” override the constitution, treaties or the separation of powers.It is vital for the long-term health of democracy that the judges prevail. If politicians are able to break or bend fundamental legal principles to suit the mood of the moment, the future of freedom and human rights is in danger.In the United States, the supreme court will soon rule on whether Donald Trump should be allowed to run again for president after having encouraged and condoned the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021 in a violent attempt to prevent Congress certifying the election of Joe Biden as his successor. Two states, Colorado and Maine, have barred him from the ballot.The 14th amendment of the constitution, adopted right after the civil war, states that no person shall “hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath (…) to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.If the court applies the constitution literally, it’s hard to see how it can let Trump stand in November’s election, even though he may not be found guilty by a court over the insurrection. However, to deny the runaway favourite for the Republican nomination a chance to regain the White House would ignite a firestorm of outrage among his supporters, and perhaps a wider sense of a denial of democracy.Even some Trump-haters contend that it would be wiser for him to be defeated in an election than prevented by judges from running for office. The fact that the supreme court is dominated by conservative justices appointed by Trump and his Republican predecessors might not be enough to convince millions of Americans that they were robbed of a free vote.The same kind of issue has arisen repeatedly in the UK, where the high court ruled in 2016 that even after the Brexit referendum, the government still required the assent of parliament to give notice of Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. The Daily Mail infamously branded those judges “enemies of the people”. In 2019, the supreme court overruled Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament, and more recently it ruled unanimously that Rwanda was not a safe country to send people seeking asylum in Britain. Each time, populist politicians denounced what they call “rule by judges” and vowed to find ways to limit their powers.Of course, it is politically inconvenient when judges tell a government, or a parliament, that it is acting illegally or unconstitutionally, but it is an essential safeguard of our democracy that those rulings be respected and implemented faithfully.While Britain lacks a written constitution and is governed by a mixture of laws and informal conventions, its courts are bound to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a founding signatory, and the jurisprudence of the European court of human rights that derives from it.View image in fullscreenIn France, the constitutional council last week struck down substantial parts of an immigration law passed by parliament last month. Les sages (the wise persons) annulled more than a third of the measures, including provisions that would have obliged parliament to set annual immigration quotas, discriminated between French nationals and foreigners, and between working and non-working foreigners in entitlement to welfare benefits, and denied automatic citizenship to French-born children of foreign nationals.Emmanuel Macron had referred the law to the council as soon as the conservative opposition forced his minority government to accept a severe toughening of its original bill, drawing charges of hypocrisy since his party voted for the legislation knowing that parts of it were likely to be ruled unconstitutional.As expected, the council’s ruling was denounced as a “legal coup” against the will of parliament and the people by mainstream conservative Republicans and Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally, who demanded that the constitution be changed to permit a referendum on immigration quotas. But amending the constitution is a lengthy process that requires both houses of parliament to adopt identical wording and then a three-fifths majority at a special congress of both houses. Don’t hold your breath.In Germany, the federal constitutional court ruled last year that the government’s attempt to divert money left over in an off-budget special fund for Covid-19 recovery for investment in the country’s green energy transition was unconstitutional. The ruling has left the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, with a massive hole in his budget that the government is struggling to fill.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe court decision has prompted the beginnings of a sensible debate on amending a constitutional debt brake enacted during the global financial crisis in 2009, which severely restricts budget deficits except in times of emergency. At least no one in Germany has branded the justices “enemies of the people” or demanded their heads on pikes.In Israel, an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government to curb the independent supreme court’s right to interpret quasi-constitutional basic laws to overrule government decisions and appointments and to reject legislation passed by the single-chamber parliament caused months of civil unrest last year.Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges and seeks to exert political control over judicial appointments, argued that the will of the people should prevail over an unelected judiciary. Far-right members of his government contend that Jewish religious law should trump the basic law anyway. The supreme court this month overturned a law that would have prevented it using the principle of “reasonableness” to quash government decisions.In Poland, a democratically elected nationalist government defied the EU to dismantle the independence of the judiciary by packing the constitutional court and prosecutors’ offices with loyalists and creating a politically controlled body to discipline judges for their rulings. Now a pro-European government is trying to reverse the damage wrought by its predecessors, but faces accusations of violating the rule of law itself by ignoring the packed court’s rulings.The common thread in all these different situations is that in a democracy, the will of the people is not and should not be absolute and unconstrained by law. Perdition that way lies.
Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank

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Nikki Haley was targeted by a second “swatting” attempt on New Year’s Day – just two days after authorities responded to a similar call regarding Haley, according to Reuters.This time, the call was made by someone who said Haley’s daughter had been shot and was lying in a pool of blood. The caller, who told police her name was Rose, also said she was on the phone with Haley, who was threatening to shoot herself.A Charleston county sheriff’s deputy responded to the scene and it was soon discovered the call was a hoax.After the 2024 Republican presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina confirmed, on NBC’s Meet the Press on Monday, that she had been the victim of a swatting hoax, new information from an incident report obtained by Reuters has revealed she was actually swatted on two separate occasions.Police first responded to a swatting call – or a prank call intentionally made to lure resources such as a Swat team to a location to respond to a false threat of danger – at Haley’s home in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, on 30 December. Haley was not present at the time of the swatting, but her parents were home with a caregiver.Haley’s son was also away from the home, as was her husband, Michael, who is serving overseas.Haley called the ordeal an “awful situation”.“It put the law enforcement officers in danger, it put my family in danger,” Haley said. “It was not a safe situation.”“That’s what happens when you run for president,” Haley said. “What I don’t want is for my kids to live like this.”According to an email including comments from Kiawah Island public safety, obtained by Reuters, authorities were called to Haley’s house after a man called 911 and “claimed to have shot his girlfriend and threatened to harm himself while at the residence of Nikki Haley”.The 1 January incident marks the second swatting attempt against Haley.Haley is now one of several high profile politicians targeted by swatting calls.In December, the home of the Florida senator Rick Scott was also swatted. The homes of two other members of congress, the New York congressman Brandon Williams and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, were also swatted. Greene said on X that she had been a victim of a swatting call several times, including once on Christmas Day.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFalse cries of danger were also conducted on a larger scale earlier this month, when at least nine state capitol buildings across the US were under evacuation orders due to bomb threats that turned out to be fake.A judge in Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case was also targeted. Police responded to a report of a shooting at a Washington DC home revealed to belong to the US district judge Tanya Chutkan. Authorities quickly determined there was no threat of a shooting.The White House is not immune to these dangerous prank calls. On 15 January, multiple Washington DC emergency crews rushed to the president’s home following a call received at 7.03am.Joe Biden was not in the building at the time.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland,described a “deeply disturbing spike” in threats against public officials.“These threats of violence are unacceptable,” Garland said. “They threaten the fabric of our democracy.” More

Supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza condemned comments made by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as “downright authoritarian” after the California Democrat suggested, without offering evidence, that pro-Palestinian activists may have ties to Russia and president Vladimir Putin.In an interview on Sunday, Pelosi called on the FBI to investigate protesters involved in the progressive movement pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire in Gaza.“For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr Putin’s message,” Pelosi said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”Pressed for clarity on whether she believed the activists were “Russian plants”, Pelosi replied: “Seeds or plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”The interview sparked a furious backlash among activists and anti-war protesters, who pointed to polling that shows strong shares of Democrats support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and agree with the claim that Israel is committing a “genocide” against the Palestinian people.Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the remarks an “unsubstantiated smear” that “echo a time in our nation when opponents of the Vietnam war were accused of being communist sympathizers and subjected to FBI harassment”.“Her comments once again show the negative impact of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by those supporting Israeli apartheid,” Awad said in a statement. “Instead of baselessly smearing those Americans as Russian collaborators, former House Speaker Pelosi and other political leaders should respect the will of the American people by calling for an end to the Netanyahu government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”Since the outbreak of war in October, Joe Biden has faced a groundswell of opposition to his policy in Gaza. Prominent Jewish, progressive and anti-war groups are among the many organizations involved in the ceasefire movement. In recent weeks, activists have interrupted major campaign events, including a speech on reproductive rights in Virginia where he was interrupted at least a dozen times.Biden has resisted calls to back an immediate ceasefire, even as his administration works to secure a temporary pause to the bloodshed in exchange for the release of nearly 100 hostages taken in the 7 October attack on Israel. The mounting Palestinian death toll, now estimated to have surpassed 26,000, and widespread suffering in Gaza, have infuriated key parts of his Democratic base.Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who supports a ceasefire and has been closely monitoring the US response to the war in Gaza, said Pelosi’s remarks amounted to an “unacceptable disinformation being spread by the most powerful Democratic party leaders”.“Democrats are most successful when they represent a broad coalition, but the party leadership has sabotaged itself by vigorously attacking the majority of their own Democratic voters who oppose the war,” he said.Pelosi, who led House Democrats for 20 years and served twice as House speaker, is apparently the first and most high profile US official to publicly accuse Russia of supporting pro-Palestinian activists in an effort to exacerbate divisions among Democrats over Israel’s war in Gaza.Pelosi made the comments in response to a question about whether opposition to Biden’s handling of the conflict could hurt the president’s re-election prospects in November.In a statement following Pelosi’s appearance on CNN, a spokesperson emphasized that the former speaker believes the “focus” should remain on strategies to end the suffering of the people in Gaza and secure release of the hostages held by Hamas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe spokesperson continued: “Speaker Pelosi has always supported and defended the right of all Americans to make their views known through peaceful protest. Informed by three decades on the House Intelligence Committee, Speaker Pelosi is acutely aware of how foreign adversaries meddle in American politics to sow division and impact our elections, and she wants to see further investigation ahead of the 2024 election.”Brianna Wu, who created a pac to support progressive candidates called Rebellion, wrote on social media that Pelosi’s comments were inartful, but tracked with recent efforts by Russia to interfere in a US election.“Information warfare doesn’t invent new divisions. It finds existing divisions and exacerbates them,” Wu wrote. “Since Putin wants Trump to win, he will obviously be funding efforts to split the Democratic Party. Israel/Palestine is proving to be very effective at this.”Democrats in Michigan have warned the White House that dissatisfaction with Biden’s approach to the Israel-Gaza war may jeopardize his support among Arab Americans in a swing state that could determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a sizable Arab American population that helped seal Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, shared the results of a November poll that showed broad support for a permanent ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza.“So, based on Nancy Pelosi’s remarks, 76% of Democrats / 49% of Republicans / 61% of Americans are potentially paid operatives of Russia who are pushing Putin’s message of calling for a ceasefire??” he wrote.Hammoud, who last week joined a group of Arab and Muslim leaders in refusing to meet with Biden’s reelection campaign manager to discuss the administration’s approach to the war, concluded: “The Democratic party leadership is in disarray.” More

E Jean Carroll intends to spend the $83m awarded to her in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on something the former president “hates”, she revealed just days after the judgment.On Friday, the jury in Carroll’s case decided that she should receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m punitive retribution in the case pitting her against Trump. Of the $18.3m, Trump was told to pay Carroll $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign and $7.3m for the emotional harm caused by statements he made against her in 2019.Carroll and her legal team did not speak to reporters as they left court but broke their public silence on Monday in an interview with Good Morning America.Alongside her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Carroll told host George Stephanopoulos that Friday’s win had left her overcome with “elation”.“It filled me up … It was almost painful,” she said, adding: “Today, I’m very happy.Stephanopoulos asked her to give the public an idea as to how she planned to spend the millions of dollars she’s won, and Carroll provided a clear outline.“I’d like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates,” Carroll said. “If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent.”Carroll also said that she would perhaps explore giving to “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump”.Trump went on his Truth Social platform to decry Friday’s decision as “absolutely ridiculous” and said he would be filing an appeal.“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” Trump’s Truth Social post said in part. “THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”Pointing to Trump’s combative response, Stephanopoulos asked Carroll’s attorney whether or not their side expected to collect the money awarded to them. Kaplan said that she was “pretty confident”.“We might not get it right away. But one way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold. We will collect the judgment,” Kaplan said.In the weeks leading up to the trial, Carroll revealed that she wasn’t sleeping or eating in anticipation of facing the former president.A judge determined Trump had defamed Carroll after sexually abusing her in a department room dressing store in the mid-1990s and subsequently defamed her.However, once she arrived for the trial that produced Friday’s judgment, Carroll said seeing Trump was like seeing “an emperor without clothes”.“It was like he was like nothing, like an emperor without clothes,” Carroll said. “All my terror leading up to it, and there he is. He’s just something in a suit.”The recent trial was separate from one about a year earlier in which Carroll won $5m for sexual abuse and separate, earlier remarks which had also defamed her. The proceeding was mostly absent of theatrics, though Trump caused a stir when he walked out during Kaplan’s closing statement.Asked about her reaction to that moment, Kaplan quipped that she felt the moment won Carroll about $10m.“The idea in a case where our basic thesis is that he’s a bully who can’t follow the rules, to act like a bully who doesn’t follow the rules? An interesting strategy, let me put it that way,” Kaplan said about how Trump stormed out during her closing statement.Kaplan went on to note that if Trump goes on to defame Carroll again, they would “bring another case”.“It’s just going to be more money,” Kaplan said. More