Previous President Donald Trump countersued writer E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday, boasting in a court filing that Carroll defamed him on television.
Final month, a New York jury identified Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Manhattan department keep in the 1990s, but did not locate him liable for her alleged rape. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.
The jury also uncovered Trump had defamed Carroll by contacting her statements a “hoax” and a “con task.”
On May well 10, a working day immediately after the determination, Carroll was questioned in an job interview on CNN how she felt when the jury did not uncover Trump liable for rape, Carroll responded: “Well, I just quickly (explained) in my possess head, ‘Oh, indeed, he did. Oh certainly, he did.’”
In his countersuit, Trump alleged that the statements Carroll designed have been defamatory and opposite to the jury’s verdict in which he was observed not liable for rape.
She created these statements “with actual malice and sick will with an intent to considerably and spitefully hurt and attack” his reputation, the previous president’s accommodate alleges.
He is looking for a retraction of her statements and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as properly as reimbursements for legal expenses “and any even further reduction” the courtroom deems vital.
A spokesperson for the Trump marketing campaign did not instantly react to a request for comment.
Carroll’s legal professional, Robbie Kaplan, explained in a assertion that Trump’s claim is “almost nothing extra than his most recent work to delay accountability for what a jury has by now located to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll,” and that most of the former president’s statements in his counterclaim “have been manufactured outdoors of New York’s one particular-12 months statute of limitations.”
Kaplan included, “But irrespective of whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming pretty shortly.”
The former president has denied Carroll’s sexual assault allegation and maintains he by no means defamed her since he was telling the truth. He has also insisted that he had hardly ever met Carroll, and stated she was “not my style.”
In closing arguments, her attorneys stated Carroll was “exactly” Trump’s kind, and the previous president did not display up at her civil demo accusing him of rape simply because “he is aware of what he did” to her.
Adam Reiss and Dareh Gregorian contributed.
