More than a month after a jury in New York found Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming former Elle magazine advice columnist, E Jean Carroll, the 77-year old former US president has now sued Carroll for defamation, alleging she falsely accused him of rape.
On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a counterclaim against Carroll in the Southern District of New York federal court, accusing the columnist of the “false statements” she made during an appearance on CNN cable news on May 10 where she alleged he raped her — an allegation he has consistently denied, and had called a “hoax”.
During the CNN appearance, Carroll responded to the jury’s findings that Trump did not rape her, saying, “Oh, yes, he did—oh, yes, he did.”
Trump has accused Carroll of acting with “actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack” his reputation, and his lawyers are asking for a retraction, along with “compensatory and punitive damages.”
Last month, the jury awarded Carroll $US5 million in damages in her civil case against Trump. In her testimony during the trial, Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a New York City department store in 1996, and then ruining her reputation by calling her a liar when she told her story in 2019.
Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump in November 2019. In that claim, she accused him of defaming her after he dismissed her rape allegation and claimed he didn’t know who she was. Last month, Carroll amended this appeal, seeking an additional $10m in damages for Trump’s denials during the CNN appearance the day after the verdict.
Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Trump in 2022, after the state of New York passed a law allowing survivors of sexual violence a chance to file civil suits even if the statute of limitations on their claims had expired.
In this second lawsuit, she accused him of battery and defamation.
When the jury found in favour of Carroll last month, she appeared on NBC News saying she was “overwhelmed with joy and happiness and delight for the women in this country.”
This week, allegations of further disturbing criminal behaviour by Trump have been shared in the release of a new book by a former staffer of his administration, who shares details about occasions where Trump made lewd comments about his daughter Ivanka.
Miles Taylor, who served as a Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff under Trump, shares extremely repulsive things the former president allegedly said about his daughter in front of his colleagues in his book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.
Another Chief of Staff reportedly recounted a conversation “in visible disgust,” Taylor writes. “Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man.’”