Trump lawyers frantically trying to block expert witness who starred in Giuliani trial
Donald Trump's lawyers are scrambling to keep an expert witness who put a price tag on Rudy Giuliani's election lies from testifying in a defamation lawsuit filed by journalist E. Jean Carroll.
A lawyer for the former president asked a federal judge in New York to block Northwestern University professor Ashlee Humphreys, an expert on social media trends, on the same day she testified in Giuliani's defamation trial in Washington, D.C., reported The Daily Beast.
“This court should simply exclude Dr. Humphreys’ testimony altogether,” wrote Trump defense lawyer Michael Madaio in his motion.
Humphreys testified Wednesday that her analysis found that it would cost Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss $17.8 million to $47.8 million to repair their reputations after Giuliani's lies about their conduct during the 2020 election, and a jury later awarded the mother-daughter pair $148 million in damages to be paid by the former Trump lawyer.
“The damages estimations in her initial report are egregiously inflated (to the tune of millions of dollars), utilize methods which ascribe harm in an unreliable and incorrect manner; and do not accurately reflect the actual harm to plaintiff’s reputation,” wrote Madaio in his filing to U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
Humphreys already testified in Carroll's civil rape trial last spring against Trump, who was found liable for sexual assault against the journalist, and the university professor analyzed how much it would cost Carroll to push back against the former president's lies about her by purchasing TV and online content, which she totaled at about $2.7 million.
Jurors ultimately awarded $5 million to Carroll in that case, and they associated $1.7 million of that using Humphreys' analysis, and a confidential version of her expert report in this new case – which focuses on Trump's denials of her rape allegations – included a detailed assessment for “calculated damages” that tops out at nearly $21 million.
“The initial report no longer aligns with the subject matter of this case,” Madaio wrote to the judge last week. “In the initial report, Dr. Humphreys assesses the collective harm of all three statements… resulting in an improper and inflated estimation of damages.”
Carroll's lawyers countered Monday with a filing that accuses Trump's team of ignoring that Humphreys had already adjusted her total in a supplemental report after Carroll dropped one of Trump's statements from her complaint, and the plaintiff's attorney called out the former president's "desperation" after Humphreys starred in Giuliani's trial.
“Trump is understandably desperate to get rid of Professor Humphreys," wrote Carroll's lead attorney Roberta Kaplan. "The only issue at the upcoming trial is the amount of damages that Carroll is entitled to receive. Professor Humphreys will be critical to Carroll’s case, and Trump’s own expert has already been disqualified. That Professor Humphreys recently testified in another case that resulted in a $108 million defamation verdict likely adds to Trump’s sense of urgency."