JUST IN: E. Jean Carroll Files For Additional Damages Over Trump’s Comments Made During CNN Town Hall
E. Jean Carroll, weeks off her courtroom victory over Donald Trump, is again seeking “very substantial” damages after Trump mocked her during a CNN town hall earlier in the month, days after winning her sexual abuse and defamation case against the former president.
Earlier in the month, Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages after a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse. In 2019, Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York City in the 1990s. Trump quickly denied the allegations and launched brutal attacks on Carroll, over which she sued him for defamation. Carroll also filed a civil suit against the former president accusing him of rape.
Trump tore into Carroll during the town hall and called her allegations of sexual assault “fake” and a “made-up story.” “Ms. Carroll’s filing Monday in Manhattan federal court seeks to intensify the financial pain for Mr. Trump,” reported the New York Times, which added:
Monday’s filing came in a separate defamation lawsuit that Ms. Carroll had filed in 2019 against Mr. Trump, 76, which is before the same judge who presided in the civil trial. The older case stemmed from comments Mr. Trump made that year, shortly after she said that he had raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. That lawsuit had been sidetracked by appeals, but is still pending.
“This conduct supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same,” the filing says, referring to Trump’s insults directed at Carroll.
During the CNN town hall, Trump also called Carroll a “wack job” and claimed he had “no idea” who she is, despite being shown photos of them together during his deposition in the case. Carroll’s new filing alleges that Trump’s CNN comments “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite.”
The Times reported in mid-May that Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who won her case against Trump, “sent her the transcript of his comments, and that she had read only the first paragraph.”
“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Carroll told the Times, adding she had been “insulted by better people.”
“I am upset on the behalf of young men in America. They cannot listen to this balderdash and this old-timey view of women, which is a cave-man view,” Carroll added.
“Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” Kaplan told the Times at the time when asked about another defamation suit. “We have to weigh the various pros and cons and we’ll come to a decision in the next day or so, probably.”
This is a developing story and has been updated.
