In The Former Guy’s legal war against E. Jean Carroll…
Trump’s lawyers filed a new counterclaim in response to Carroll’s first lawsuit for defamation against the former president, which is a separate case that has yet to reach trial.
Trump’s complaint says that Carroll falsely accused him of rape after a jury in a civil trial found that he sexually abused her.
According to the counterclaim, Trump alleged that Carroll defamed him when she said, “oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” in response to an interview question on CNN asking for her thoughts on the jury’s ruling that Trump was not liable for rape.
Trump seeks a retraction as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The counterclaim states that Carroll made “these false statements with actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack.” According to the filing, 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.”
The Hill
Carroll’s lawyer responded.
“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 by forcibly inserting his fingers into her vagina,” Carroll’s attorney, Robbie Kaplan, told The Hill. “Four out of the five statements in Trump’s so-called counterclaim were made outside of New York’s one-year statute of limitations. The other statement similarly will not withstand a motion to dismiss.”
“Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll. But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon,” Kaplan said.
The Hill
