Former journalist E. Jean Carroll, to whom Donald Trump must already pay $ 5 million for a sexual assault in 1996, filed a new defamation lawsuit on Monday for remarks by the former American president after the verdict. “She’s crazy,” said the Republican primary candidate for the 2024 presidential election, on CNN, the day after the judgment rendered on May 9, unanimously, by a jury of nine citizens in New York.
In front of spectators won over to his cause, some of whom were hilarious, he repeated that he did not know the former columnist of Elle magazine, again castigating “a story made up from scratch”. Statements “after the verdict (which) show the depth of his malice towards Carroll”, claims, in the new complaint, his lawyer Roberta Kaplan. She seeks “very significant punitive damages”, “to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further acts of defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”
The day before the show on CNN, the jury had found the 45th president of the United States (2017-2021) civilly responsible for the sexual assault of the author, who accuses him of having raped her in a cabin. fitting in the lingerie department of a New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman, in the spring of 1996. The jury also found Donald Trump liable for defamation for remarks made in 2022, and sentenced him to pay a total of 5 million dollars to his victim. Donald Trump has appealed.
The new complaint was filed as part of a procedure already underway, resulting from previous civil lawsuits brought in 2019, again for defamation, by E. Jean Carroll against the former president. That previous complaint was delayed by procedural battles, including over whether Donald Trump had presidential immunity in 2019, while he was in the White House.