Former journalist E. Jean Carroll, to whom Donald Trump already owes $ 5 million for a sexual assault in 1996, filed Monday, May 22, a new defamation complaint for remarks of the former US president after the verdict. "She is crazy," said the candidate in the Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election, on the set of CNN, the day after the judgment rendered on May 9, unanimously, by a jury of nine citizens in New York. In front of spectators devoted to his cause, some of whom hilarious, he had repeated that he did not know the former columnist of Elle magazine, castigating again "a story invented from scratch".
Statements "after the verdict (which) show the depth of his malice towards Carroll," says in the new complaint, his lawyer Roberta Kaplan. She is seeking "very significant punitive damages," "to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same."
Raped in a fitting room
The day before the CNN show, 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 raping her in a fitting room 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 to his victim. Donald Trump appealed.
The new complaint was filed as part of proceedings already underway, stemming from previous civil lawsuits filed as early as 2019, again for defamation, by E. Jean Carroll against the former president. This previous complaint was delayed by procedural battles, including over whether Donald Trump enjoyed presidential immunity in 2019, while he was in the White House.