EXCLUSIVE: Federal Judge Orders 9 Hour Trump Deposition in Michael Cohen Case

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s frivolous $500 million civil lawsuit against his former attorney Michael Cohen ordered that the disgraced ex-president must show up to be deposed on October 3rd at the time and location of Cohen’s choosing.

On Tuesday, we reported that Cohen had filed a new motion to compel Trump to provide the location and time for the October 3rd deposition.

Trump refused.

Consequently, Cohen and his legal team now hold all the cards, and the judge has given them free range to depose Trump for a maximum of 9 hours, Cohen revealed Thursday on the MeidasTouch Network’s Political Beatdown podcast.

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Michael Cohen said that Trump is bringing in another attorney and plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment during the deposition so as to not incriminate himself in a separate case in which he is currently involved.

Cohen noted how unusual it is for anyone to invoke the Fifth in a civil case, let alone the plaintiff who brought the case. “So again, I want to sort of talk about for a split second the unusual nature of this type of a scenario. Have you ever really heard of somebody taking the Fifth in a civil case that they are the plaintiff on? And the answer is no. The answer is no. I don't even know how one could think of another scenario outside of this where something like this would even happen.”

While the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” taking the Fifth in civil litigation has different implications. A witness's invocation of the Fifth Amendment in civil litigation may give rise to an adverse inference “when independent evidence exists of the fact to which the party refuses to answer.”

Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson to define 'woman.' Science says there's no simple answer.

Scientists, gender law scholars and philosophers of biology said Jackson's response was commendable, though perhaps misleading. It's useful, they say, that Jackson suggested science could help answer Blackburn's question, but they note that a competent biologist would not be able to offer a definitive answer either. Scientists agree there is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman, and with billions of women on the planet, there is much variation.

"I don't want to see this question punted to biology as if science can offer a simple, definitive answer," said Rebecca Jordan-Young, a scientist and gender studies scholar at Barnard College whose work explores the relationships between science and the social hierarchies of gender and sexuality. "The rest of her answer was more interesting and important. She said 'as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there's a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide.' In other words, she said context matters – which is true in both biology and society. I think that's a pretty good answer for a judge."

'There isn't one single 'biological' answer to the definition of a woman'

Blackburn tweeted after the exchange that "this is a simple question," and called Jackson's response "a major red flag."

But Jordan-Young said she sees Jackson's answer, particularly the second half, reflecting the necessity of nuance. While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary – if you are born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man and if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman – the reality, gender experts say, is more complex.

"There isn't one single 'biological' answer to the definition of a woman. There's not even a singular biological answer to the question of 'what is a female,'" Jordan-Young said.

There are at least six different biological markers of “sex” in the body: genitals, chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive structures, hormone ratios and secondary sex characteristics. None of the six is strictly dichotomous, Jordan-Young said, and the different markers don’t always align.

Sarah Richardson, a Harvard scholar, historian and philosopher of biology who focuses on the sciences of sex and gender and their policy dimensions, said Jackson's answer accurately reflects legal practice. While U.S. law remains an unsettled arena for the conceptualization and definition of sex, it frequently grounds sex categorization in biological evidence and reasoning.

But like Jordan-Young, Richardson emphasized that biology does not offer a simple or singular answer to the question of what defines a woman.

"As is so often the case, science cannot settle what are really social questions," she said. "In any particular case of sex categorization, whether in law or in science, it is necessary to build a definition of sex particular to context."

Experts say the category of 'woman' has always been in dispute

Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA who specializes in gender and the law, said it's important to note this isn't an entirely new debate.

The category of woman has long been politically contested. Black women, she said, were not always welcomed in the category. For example, while the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, for decades many Black women were excluded from exercising it. During Jim Crow, there would be bathrooms labeled "men," "women" and "colored." The longstanding view of white supremacy denied recognition as women to Black women and women of color.

Williams said one can also look to the era of Phyllis Schlafly, an attorney and activist and the face of conservative women in the 1970s who argued against the Equal Rights Amendment, which would make discrimination on the basis of sex unconstitutional. Williams said Schlafly believed women's roles as homemakers were fundamental to how the category of woman was defined.

"There was an effort to define womanhood in very specific ways around roles of mothering and nurture, and to suggest that a society in which women's rights and opportunities were equal to men would essentially lead to a genderless, gender-neutral society," she said. "In other words, if women ceased acting like women, they would cease being women."

What's A Woman? GOP Senators Stumble On Their Own Question To Ketanji Brown Jackson.

https://news.yahoo.com/whats-w...