Former President Donald Trump is suing writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation in their protracted legal fight.
Trump’s lawyers filed a counterclaim on Tuesday in New York federal court, listing various instances over the years when Carroll accused Trump of raping her.
The most recent instance, they note, happened during a TV interview on May 10, one day after a jury in a separate case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation but not for rape.
Carroll “disregarded the jury’s finding that Counterclaimant did not rape her” and said: “oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” the filing states.
Trump, who is running for another stint in the White House, has repeatedly denied Carroll’s allegations that he raped her during the mid-1990s in a Manhattan department store.
Carroll has filed multiple legal claims against Trump, including the sex-abuse suit in which the jury awarded her $5 million in damages last month. She was able to sue thanks to New York enacting a law that gave alleged sexual abuse victims a one-year period to sue their alleged assailants, even if the statute of limitations on their claim had expired.
The new counterclaim from Trump’s legal team is part of a separate defamation lawsuit filed in 2019 that is set to go to trial in January and seeks at least $10 million in damages.
The court previously rejected Trump’s bid to countersue last year, but the fresh attempt comes after the judge allowed Carroll to amend her complaint earlier this month with new comments from Trump denying that he knew Carroll and calling her allegations a “hoax and a lie.”
In response to Trump’s latest countersuit bid, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said Trump “again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll.”
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Kaplan also said: “Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E. Jean Carroll. But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon.”
The counterclaim from Trump’s legal team seeks various forms of relief, including retractions, damages, and a denial of the relief sought by Carroll.
Trump “has been the subject of significant harm to his reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an inordinate amount of damages sustained as a result” of Carroll’s claims, the filing says.