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Okay, that's tangential to the question I am asking, and I should have left it out. Basically, do you find (a) one of these (b) both of these (c) neither of these accounts credible?
I want to avoid all the political stuff around them, because that's getting us nowhere and everyone has their own opinions. The media sure do, but going down those rabbit holes is a distraction.
What kicked this off for me is all the "look at all the court cases Trump is facing" and this is one of them. So forgetting, as best we can, the individuals involved or the three-ring-circus around it all, insofar as the first has been a successful court case or two, just on the bare accounts of the parties making the accusations: do the good people, folx, or however you all like to describe yourselves of The Motte, as reasonably intelligent and sane persons, think that either/both/neither account is credible and second, you'd convict on that alone?
I can accept "yeah this sounds like it could have happened, but I wouldn't be sure enough in a court of law to convict on it" if that's how you feel. I'm trying to get a gauge on how these two accounts sound to other people, outside my own views and opinions (for what it's worth, the more I hear about the Carroll case the more I'm shifting towards "she's lying" but that's not helping me decide if the bare account of the accusation, with no witnesses to back it up, sounds credible to others).
I'm curious what's tangential.
I repeat: Neither claim is provably true in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the accused. But neither is it provably untrue in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the women involved.
The entire concept of a "conviction" (or any kind of verdict, as we're talking about civil not criminal trials here) on the basis of one person's testimony to behavior that happened decades ago is obscene. It is contrary to the idea of civil liberties and limited government. Full stop. If in the jury box I'd be a vote against, regardless of the law involved.
Trying to adjudicate who had sex with whom and how into it they were decades ago is a morass. Trying to do so is obscene, and should not be a part of our politics. Full stop. That was my position on Brett Kavanaugh, on Tara Reade, on Trump's various women, it'll be my position on the next one too.
It's extremely likely that she is lying, or simply wrong, about multiple details of any quick moving event that happened decades ago. Trump, in turn, denied ever knowing her and said she was so ugly he'd never fuck her anyway; when confronted under oath with photos of their meeting, Trump misidentified Carroll as his then-mistress/later-second-wife Maples. Humans aren't actually so good at this stuff.
Jean Carroll has demonstrably lied.
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