Author E. Jean Carroll arrives as jury selection is about to start within the defamation case against former US President Donald Trump brought by Carroll, who accused him of raping her within the Nineties, on the Manhattan Federal Court, Latest York, April 25, 2023.Â
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images
Donald Trump, who was found liable by a civil jury last month for sexually abusing and defaming author E. Jean Carroll, filed a countersuit alleging she has defamed the ex-president by continuing to say he raped her in Latest York within the mid-Nineties.
“Oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” Caroll said during a CNN interview on May 10, reiterating her allegation that Trump raped her.
A day earlier, a jury in U.S. District Court Manhattan awarded Carroll $5 million in damages from Trump.
Trump’s latest counterclaim hinges on the proven fact that the jury didn’t find by a preponderance of the evidence that he raped her, whilst it found he sexually abused her during their encounter in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman within the mid-Nineties.
As a consequence of Carroll’s “repeated falsehoods and defamatory statements,” Trump “has been the topic of great harm to his repute,” wrote Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba within the counterclaim filed Tuesday night.
The alleged rape “clearly was not committed, in accordance with the jury verdict,” Habba wrote.
But Carroll’s attorneys said that just isn’t true.
Carroll’s lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, in an announcement said, “Donald Trump again argues, contrary to each logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll.”
Kaplan also said 4 out of the five statements Trump claimed were defamatory were made outside of Latest York’s one-year statute of limitations. The fifth, the attorney added, “is not going to withstand a motion to dismiss.”
Kaplan called Trump’s counterclaim “nothing greater than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll.”
Trump’s countersuit is the newest twist in a circuitous, multicourt legal battle over Carroll’s allegation that Trump, 77, sexually assaulted her. Carroll, 79, first went public in a 2019 magazine article along with her claim of being raped by Trump, who was president on the time of that allegation.
He immediately denied the claim and argued that Carroll was motivated to make up the story by political animus and a desire to extend sales of her then-forthcoming book detailing her account and its effect on her life.
Carroll in November 2019 filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, alleging he defamed her along with his denials.
A trial in that suit, which was stalled for several years over legal arguments about whether Trump will be sued for statements he made as president, is scheduled to start Jan. 15 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The trial, if it happens, will occur just because the 2024 Republican presidential primary season is about to start. Trump, who’s looking for the nomination in that race, has consistently led polls amongst a growing field of GOP candidates.
Carroll individually sued Trump in the identical court in late 2022 for battery, related to the alleged rape, and for defaming her with comments he made about her claim last November.
That second lawsuit went to trial in April. It ended with jurors on May 9 ordering Trump to pay Carroll $5 million in damages after finding that it was more likely than not that he sexually abused her and defamed her.
Trump is appealing that verdict.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s overseeing each cases, this month allowed Carroll to amend her first lawsuit, which is looking for $10 million in damages, to incorporate alleged defamatory statements Trump made about her at a CNN town hall a day after the jury verdict in the primary suit. The judge just isn’t related to Carroll’s lawyer.
The counterclaim filed by Habba on Tuesday was contained in response to the amended suit and denied Carroll’s substantive allegations.
