Donald Trump’s legal woes could yet derail his presidential campaign – but not in the way you think

The memes were delicious. Funny, too. No sooner had the federal jury delivered its damages verdict against Donald Trump over his sexual assault of the writer E Jean Carroll than social media lit up; lit up in the brightest, twinkliest lights that would befit any Broadway opening night. He would have to pay her an astonishing, eye-popping, head-spinning $83m for the “storm of hate” he had unleashed. $83m!

On Twitter, Trump Tower on 5th Avenue became E Jean Carroll Tower; the famous blue, red and gold 727 plane owned by the former president now had the letters “T-R-U-M-P” crossed out and instead – you guessed it – “E Jean Carroll” written in giant letters along the fuselage. On social media, she owned him.

This was a civil trial, not criminal – Trump, though, had been anything but civil through the proceedings. He had been abusive of E Jean Carroll. Describing her as a chancer and a fantasist, he said he’d never met the woman he was alleged to have raped in the 1990s in a changing room in New York department store Bergdorf Goodman.

Ms Carroll’s lawyers had been seeking 10 million in damages; the court awarded her eight times that. “This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep a woman down,” E Jean Carroll said in a statement afterwards.

Like so much involving Donald Trump, there is a morality tale; there is also the collision of the former president’s rat-like cunning and his utter, crass stupidity. Why so dumb? Well, during the case, Trump was boasting about his enormous wealth, and how he had hundreds of millions of dollars in cash sitting in a bank account.

And that obviously coloured the jury’s judgment. (“Well, if he’s that loaded, then 80 mill isn’t going to hurt too much...”) The fact is, there is considerable evidence that Trump has always overstated his wealth.

He also had a lawyer who seemed to have been employed for her skill in performing for the TV cameras outside the court, not for her canniness inside it. Alina Habba kept on repeating Trump’s talking points, to the fury of the presiding judge. At one point, she was threatened with being imprisoned for her failure to follow the court’s instructions. The Habba/Trump double act has ended up costing him a fortune.

Trump, in his earlier life, was mentored by a flamboyant yet murky figure. His name was Roy Cohn. He was chief counsel to senator Joe McCarthy during the witch-hunt hearings of the 1950s, when America became paranoid about the threat of commie “reds under the bed”. He was also responsible for getting dozens of homosexual men fired from government positions – even though he was gay himself (and would later die of Aids).

Cohn was disbarred from office for unethical and unprofessional conduct. But he gave Trump one crucial piece of advice: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.” The clear implication – that the law is there to be bought. But not this time. Trump will appeal, and he will almost certainly fail. He’s going to cough up a lot of money that he may not be able to lay his hands on.

Another case is pending where judgment is due in the next couple of weeks, which could result in another stonking fine – this time over the fraudulent attempts to artificially inflate the value of Trump Organisation properties as a way of getting cheaper loan deals. A hundred million here, a hundred million there and you’re starting to talk serious money…

On the other side of the ledger is Donald Trump’s insatiable desire to litigate. His latest foray being this week’s failed attempt at the High Court in London to sue the former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele. You know, the guy who authored the dossier with those salacious allegations of prostitutes, Trump, golden showers (... and that’s not the colour of the bathroom fittings) and a St Petersburg hotel room? Trump lost the case but has ensured those allegations about him get another airing. I wish there was one button I could press on a computer keyboard that would deliver a shrug emoji.

But perhaps the real lesson is not these cases themselves but the relationship between Trump and the US legal system. After the verdict in the E Jean Carroll case, he railed against the Department of Justice, he inveighed against Joe Biden. He whined about the unfairness of the case. But the abuse that he had been hurling at E Jean Carroll, which had cost him so dear, was gone. Silence. Schtum. Zip. It was – finally – an apparent recognition that he is not above the law; that words have consequences.

This is important. For the past year, Trump – highly effectively – has used the four criminal indictments against him, with the 91 felony charges as a way of turning around his political fortunes. Each new case seemed to solidify support for him, each new case bringing in millions more dollars from sympathetic donors. He painted himself as quasi-martyr: “If these terrible people in Biden’s justice department can do this to me, imagine what they could do if they came after you.” Trump was the lightning rod, taking the blows so the American people didn’t need to.

There is another side to this, though. The Trump campaign is haemorrhaging money. The filing deadline for all the political campaigns to make their submissions to the Federal Election Commission was last Thursday. And from the numbers, it looks as though the various Trump-supporting organisations spent more than they raised in 2023. The finance directors will give their explanations. But the executive summary only needs two words: legal fees. More than $50m has gone on the various cases that are piling up against Donald Trump.

It is almost obscene the amount of money that gets spent in US elections. But you can’t win without spending fortunes in key states. To buy ads in the various different markets around the country requires very deep pockets. What the past year has proved is that Trump’s legal entanglements have a cost as well as a benefit.

And maybe, finally, the cost is beginning to chasten him.

Jon Sopel is the former BBC North America editor and now presents Global’s ‘The News Agents’ podcast