The columnist who won a sexual abuse and defamation case against former US president Donald Trump has filed a fresh lawsuit over comments he made on TV a day after the verdict was announced.
E Jean Carroll, 79, was awarded 5 million dollars (£4.02 million) on May 10 and is seeking at least a further 10 million dollars (£8.04 million) for comments made by Mr Trump at a CNN town hall meeting.
Her lawyers, who filed the amended lawsuit in Manhattan, said the former president had “doubled down” on derogatory remarks about the former Elle magazine columnist.
“It is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite,” they wrote of his remarks on CNN. “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.”
A nine-person jury in the civil suit decided Mr Trump had sexually abused Ms Carroll – but not raped her – at an upscale Manhattan department store in early spring 1996.
It also found that Mr Trump had made false statements that damaged her reputation after she went public with her allegations in a 2019 book.
Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Mr Trump who has filed an appeal against the original verdict, declined to comment on the new legal claim which has been added to an existing lawsuit dealing with derogatory remarks made in 2019.
Ms Carroll’s lawyers asked for a speedy resolution “while she remains in good health and before Donald Trump’s time and attention are consumed entirely by his presidential campaign.”
In the new claim, her lawyers said Mr Trump, “undeterred by the jury’s verdict, persisted in maliciously defaming Carroll yet again” at the CNN event.
“He doubled down on his prior defamatory statements, asserting to an audience all too ready to cheer him on that ‘I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,’ that he did not sexually assault Carroll, and that her account — which had just been validated by a jury of Trump’s peers one day before — was a ‘fake,’ ‘made up story’ invented by a ‘whack job’.”
They added: “Trump used a national platform to demean and mock Carroll. He egged on a laughing audience as he made light of his violent sexual assault, called Carroll names, implied that Carroll was asking to be assaulted, and dismissed the jury’s verdict vindicating Carroll.”
