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Buried in President Trumps failed effort to obtain a mistrial in E. Jean Carrolls civil suit against him for libel and battery which maintains that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in a year she cant remember is an accusation of bias on the basis of literary snobbery.

A mistrial occurs when a jury cannot reach a verdict or in the presence of a procedural error or misconduct of such seriousness that it would result in an unfair trial. In such circumstances, a new trial can be ordered. While such an outcome eludes Mr. Trumps grasp for now, his lawyers raised an unusual argument to obtain one,an objectionrooted not in law but in literature.

The indignation expressed by one of Mr. Trumps attorneys, Joseph Tacopina, for Judge Lewis Kaplans comprehension of a literary reference is the latest chapter in the fraught relationship between literature and the law it was William Shakespeare who wrote, The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers and the saga of Mr. Trumps tangled legal plot.

The reference was to the Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, who served as dean of St. Patricks Cathedral, Dublin. He was a peripheral player in Englands Glorious Revolution of 1688, mostly as a secretary to the higher-born. He is most famous for his satires: A Tale of a Tub, A Modest Proposal, and Gullivers Travels.

The third section of Mr. Tacopinas request for a mistrial is titled, The Jonathan Swift Reference, and zeroes in an exchange where Mr. Trumps attorney cites a passage of a book by Ms. Carroll who is herself a journalist and author titled, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.

In Swifts original, both the English and the affluent solve the problem of Irish poverty by selling their children as food to the rich. As Swift puts it with straight-faced irony, A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee.

Mr. Trumps counsel notes how Ms. Carroll adopted this rhetorical device to suggest that all the men in America be sent to Montana for retraining. He pressed her on this point on the stand, asking of all the men here in this courtroom, in this country, all get shuffled off to Montana and retrained?

Ms. Carroll concedes that she proffered the Treasure State plan, but adds, You understand that was said in satire, to which Mr. Trumps lawyer responds, Ah. Okay. It is Judge Kaplan who steps in to inform that it comes from Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal 700 years ago. It was actually written 293 years ago.

In moving for a mistrial, Mr. Tacopina characterizes this exchange as one where the Court interjected in a manner that corroborated Ms. Carrolls testimony. The motion adds that if Ms. Carroll wished to elicit testimony about a 300 year old book that did not address the subject matter of her own book, she could have done so without Judge Kaplans assistance.

Originally posted here:
Jonathan Swift and Donald Trump Collide in Federal Court - The New York Sun