Former US president Donald Trump’s lawyers have urged a New York judge to reject a defamation lawsuit from a writer because a jury agreed their client never raped her.
The lawyers on Monday urged Judge Lewis A Kaplan to reject E Jean Carroll’s 10 million US dollar bid against the ex-president.
They want the four-year-old lawsuit rewritten to conform with last month’s finding of a jury – which awarded Ms Carroll five million dollars – which concluded Mr Trump did not rape her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1980s.
After the civil jury concluded Mr Trump had sexually abused and defamed Carroll, 79, her lawyers asked the judge to amend the original defamation lawsuit to seek 10 million dollars in compensatory damages and “very substantial” punitive damages.
They also sought to add defamation claims to the original lawsuit, citing comments Mr Trump, 76, made at a town hall meeting broadcast on CNN shortly after the jury verdict.
Mr Trump, who never attended the trial, is appealing the jury verdict.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said in response to the filing by Mr Trump’s attorneys that the jury verdict supported the claims in the pending lawsuit.
She said: “Contrary to Donald Trump’s latest arguments, the jury’s verdict makes complete sense — because the jury believed E Jean Carroll when she testified that Trump had sexually abused her, it concluded that Trump knowingly lied about Ms Carroll when he later claimed otherwise.”
