E. Jean Carroll said she would do it after Donald Trump mocked her during CNN’s town hall event on May 10. After winning a $5 million judgment in a civil case, Trump called Carroll, who has accused the former president of raping her in the 1990s, a whack job. Ms. Carroll was mulling another legal action against Trump for those remarks and followed through on those reflections today, seeking additional restitution for the damages. Trump said he would appeal the initial $5 million ruling (via NYT):
BREAKING: Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who won a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation award against Donald Trump, have filed an amended lawsuit against the former president seeking to hold him liable for remarks he made after the verdict. https://t.co/9jQEcwUa5S
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 22, 2023
Ms. Carroll’s filing Monday in Manhattan federal court seeks to intensify the financial pain for Mr. Trump. The jury in her civil case found him liable on May 9 for sexual abuse and defamation. It ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll, a former advice columnist and fixture in Manhattan’s media circles, $2 million for the sexual abuse and $3 million for the defamation.
Monday’s filing came in a separate defamation lawsuit that Ms. Carroll had filed in 2019 against Mr. Trump, 76, which is before the same judge who presided in the civil trial but had been sidetracked by appeals. The older case stemmed from comments Mr. Trump made that year, shortly after she said that he had raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. That lawsuit is still pending.
On May 10, Mr. Trump went on CNN and echoed his earlier denials about the episode, calling her account “fake” and a “made-up story.” Despite a photograph showing them together, he claimed again that he had never met Ms. Carroll, 79, called her a “wack job” and said the recent civil trial was “a rigged deal.”
The court filing on Monday argues Mr. Trump’s defamatory statements following the verdict “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite.”
“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,” the filing says.
Mr. Trump continues to fight the jury’s decision. After the verdict, his lawyer Joseph Tacopina filed a notice of appeal.
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Ms. Carroll’s legal crusade is red meat for liberal America and media outlets. It will also bolster support for Trump, who will rightfully claim these legal actions are done maliciously to damage him as a presidential candidate. He’s currently the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s nomination, though that’s the point. Democrats and the media might have found a way to beat Trump in the end game: poke the bear, and agitate him, which then animates the GOP base leading to a rematch between Trump and Biden that Democrats hope will be more manageable. The Left wants Trump to be the 2024 nominee. And the former president should be aware of this as his numbers with voters beyond his base that he needs to win still view him unfavorably. Ms. Carroll is getting her revenge. Trump should be more tactical, even if the reasoning behind all these lawsuits is hot garbage.
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