President Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a judge to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s request to amend the defamation suit in a bid to win new ‘substantial damages’ over the former president’s CNN town hall remarks.
Last month E. Jean Carroll filed court papers seeking ‘very substantial’ monetary damages over Trump’s CNN town hall remarks.
A Manhattan jury reached a verdict in the E. Jean Carroll rape/defamation case last month.
In 2019, E. Jean Carroll alleged Donald Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990’s.
Trump has denied the allegations and called E. Jean Carroll a “whack job” who’s “not my type.”
The jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.
The jury also concluded Trump DID NOT rape E. Jean Carroll.
Trump later blasted E Jean. Carroll during a CNN town hall.
“What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?” Trump said, adding the accusation was a ‘fake’ and ‘made up story.’
Trump on E. Jean Carroll trial: "Her cat was named vagina — the judge wouldn’t allow us to put that in. […] I never met this woman." pic.twitter.com/1eulthxAOa
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 11, 2023
E. Jean Carroll last month asked Judge Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, to amend the lawsuit to allow her to seek more damages related to Trump’s statements on CNN.
Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked Judge Kaplan to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s latest bid because the jury already concluded the former president did not rape Carroll.
AP reported:
A New York writer who won a $5 million jury verdict against ex-President Donald Trump can’t win a pending defamation lawsuit against him because the jury agreed with Trump that he never raped her, his lawyers told a judge Monday.
The lawyers urged Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to reject columnist E. Jean Carroll’s bid to win $10 million or more in a second judgment by rewriting the 4-year-old lawsuit against Trump to conform with the findings of the jury that last month concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll but did not rape her.
Trump’s lawyers wrote that the jury verdict favors Trump’s position in the pending lawsuit that he never defamed Carroll by claiming that he never raped her because the jury rejected the rape claim at trial. Trump, who never attended the trial, is appealing the jury verdict.
Kaplan must decide whether to accept the rewrite of the original defamation claim and Carroll’s assertion that the pending defamation case could go straight to the penalty phase of a trial because a jury had already concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He also must decide whether the United States can be substituted as the defendant in place of Trump, which would effectively nullify the action.
