Writer E. Jean Carroll is seeking a new, “very substantial” amount in damages against former President Trump for comments he made about her on CNN, The New York Times reported Monday evening.
Carroll filed her most recent complaint in Manhattan federal court almost exactly two weeks after after a jury awarded her $5 million on May 9. She sued Trump and testified that he had raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and then defamed her, causing her lasting harm.
In a CNN televised town hall on May 10, Trump did not back down from his earlier accusations against Carroll, calling the former Elle magazine columnist a “wack job” and saying her civil trial was “rigged.”
He went on to suggest during that broadcast that it was Carroll who initiated the incident, positing, “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky panky in a dressing room?”
Afterward, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan said, “Everything’s on the table” regarding further litigation against Trump.
Kaplan said during an interview on Monday that Trump’s statements on CNN “literally the day after the verdict” made it all the more important that Carroll pursue the new defamation lawsuit.
“It makes a mockery of the jury verdict and our justice system if he can just keep on repeating the same defamatory statements over and over again,” Kaplan said.
Along with Monday’s filing in a separate letter to the judge, Kaplan revealed that Trump has also threatened to file a lawsuit against Carroll “in retaliation and possibly to seek sanctions,” according to the Times.
Trump is already facing numerous legal challenges, including 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to at least two women ahead of the 2016 Presidential election. That April 4 hearing took place in a Manhattan court just a few blocks from where Carroll’s lawsuit occurred.
Trump is also the subject of criminal investigations by the state of Georgia and the federal government for his role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House.
