A few weeks after a jury found Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, the New York author is now being sued for defamation.
Even though jurors had concluded a day earlier that Carroll’s actions during the alleged 1996 assault had not gone that far, the former President of the United States filed a counterclaim on Tuesday night in which he claimed Carroll had tarnished his reputation by publicly accusing him of rape during an appearance on CNN on May 10.
According to the filing, Trump “has been the subject of significant damage to his reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an excessive amount of damages sustained as a result.”
Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages last month after a jury of six men and three women found Trump guilty of sexual abuse but not rape.
The court filing that Trump made on Tuesday is a counterclaim in a separate defamation case that Carroll brought against him in 2019 and is slated to go to trial in January. While Carroll won the primary preliminary, Trump has deciphered the decision as a triumph due to the tracking down of assault.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s legal representative, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Due to the lateness of the request, a Trump lawyer had previously been denied permission to file a counterclaim against Carroll in her defamation case.
Yet, Trump lawyer Alina Habba contends that another window for documenting a counterclaim was opened before this month when Carroll was permitted to correct her criticism protest after winning the battery preliminary.
Carroll, among other things, amended her complaint to substitute “sexual abuse” for “rape” in every sentence. Carroll also added Trump’s remarks about her at a CNN town hall, where he called her a liar and accused her of fabricating the attack after the trial.
According to the filing, Carroll falsely claimed that Trump did not rape her when she was questioned about the verdict on CNN a day later.
“Oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” she said, according to the filing, which states that Carroll made the comments “with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack” the former president.
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According to the filing, Trump’s lawyers stated, “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.”
Carroll v. Trump, 22-cv-10016, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), United States District Court.
