Ex-US president Trump sues columnist Carroll for defamation over post-trial rape claim

Donald Trump is doubling down on his legal brawl with E. Jean Carroll, suing the New York author for defamation weeks after a jury held him liable for sexually abusing her.

The former president on Tuesday night filed a counterclaim accusing Carroll of trashing his reputation by publicly accusing him of rape during a May 10 appearance on CNN, despite jurors concluding a day earlier that his actions during the alleged 1996 assault hadn’t gone that far.

Trump “has been the subject of significant harm to his reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an inordinate amount of damages sustained as a result,” according to the filing.

A jury of six men and three women last month found that Trump, who is seeking to return to the White House in the 2024 presidential election, was liable for sexual abuse — and not liable for rape — before awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.

Trump’s court filing Tuesday is a counterclaim in a separate 2019 defamation lawsuit Carroll filed against him that is set to go to trial in January. While Carroll won the first trial, Trump has interpreted the verdict as a victory, of sorts, because of the finding on rape.

‘Effort to Delay’

“Donald Trump again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll,” her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement. She called the counterclaim Trump’s “latest effort to delay accountability.”

A Trump lawyer had previously been denied court permission to file a counterclaim against Carroll in her defamation case because the request was made too late.

But Trump attorney Alina Habba argues that a new window for filing a counterclaim was opened earlier this month when Carroll was allowed to amend her defamation complaint after winning the battery trial.

‘Oh Yes He Did’

Among other things, Carroll amended her complaint to change every “rape” reference to “sexual abuse.” Carroll also revised the complaint to add Trump’s remarks about her at a CNN town hall, where he called her a liar after the trial and accused her fabricating the attack.

When Carroll was asked on CNN a day after the verdict about the jury finding that Trump didn’t rape her, she falsely claimed otherwise, according to the filing.

“Oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” she said, according to the filing, which says that Carroll made the comments “with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack” the former president.

“The interview was on television, social media and multiple internet websites, with the intention of broadcasting and circulating these defamatory statements among a significant portion of the public,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing.

Carroll went public with her claims in a 2019 magazine article, triggering a wave of sharply worded denials from Trump when he was in the White House, including an assertion by Trump that he couldn’t have raped Carroll because she wasn’t his “type” and that she falsely accused him to help Democrats. Those comments are the subject of Carroll’s defamation suit that’s heading to trial next year.

The case is Carroll v. Trump, 22-cv-10016, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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