E. Jean Carroll, the columnist who won a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation award against former President Donald Trump, is asking for at least $10 million more in a new court filing Monday that seeks to hold him responsible for the remarks he made after the verdict.
An amended lawsuit seeking the $10 million in compensatory damages — and more punitive damages — has been filed in Manhattan federal court by lawyers for Carroll, who says Trump’s remarks after making allegations of rape against him so ruined her reputation that she lost her longtime job as an advice columnist for Elle magazine.
Lawyers said in the rewritten lawsuit that the former US president “doubled down” on derogatory remarks about Carroll during an appearance on CNN a day after the verdict.
“Trump’s defamatory statements after the verdict show the depth of his malice toward Carroll because it is difficult to imagine defamatory conduct that could be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite,” the attorneys wrote. “This conduct warrants an award of very significant punitive damages in favor of Carroll both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further libel, and to deter others from doing the same.”
Two weeks ago, a nine-person jury ruled that Trump sexually abused Carroll at an upscale Manhattan department store in early spring 1996.
After calling CNN “fake news” for years, Donald Trump has held a campaign town hall on the network. It came just days after a jury found that Trump, the current frontrunner in the Republican primary race, had sexually abused and defamed columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll, who testified at the trial, first revealed her claims that Trump raped her in a dressing room in a 2019 book, but the jury rejected that claim.
Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, declined to comment on the new allegations.
Lawyers filed the new claims amending a defamation suit that was stayed as an appeals court decided whether Trump could be held liable for comments he made in 2019 while still president. The US Department of Justice backed its lawyers’ claims that the US should be replaced as a defendant.
In the new lawsuit, Carroll’s lawyers said Trump, “undeterred by the jury’s verdict, persisted in maliciously defaming Carroll once again” the next day at a town hall event hosted by CNN.
“He doubled down on his earlier defamatory statements, telling an audience too ready to cheer him on that ‘I’ve never met that woman. I’ve never seen that woman,” that he didn’t sexually assault Carroll and that his account – which had just been validated by a jury of Trump’s peers the day before – was a “false,” “made-up story.” “invented by ‘crazy labor’. These statements drew enthusiastic cheers and applause from the audience on live television,” the attorneys wrote.