Author E. Jean Carroll and the attorneys who helped her win a battery defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump are considering whether they could sue Trump yet again over virtually the same defamation arguments.
In 2019, Carroll came forward with claims Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996. Trump denied the allegations at the time and Carroll sued him, arguing that Trump had defamed her by denying her claims.
On Tuesday, a jury in a New York federal court decided that Carroll did not prove that Trump raped her but instead concluded he had committed some act of sexual abuse constituting battery. The jury further concluded that Trump had defamed her by denying the incident. The jury concluded that he should pay $5 million in the civil lawsuit.
Trump’s Town Hall Comments
During his CNN town hall appearance, moderator Kaitlan Collins asked Trump to address whether the verdict disqualifies him as a 2024 presidential candidate. Trump initially responded that his polling numbers are on the rise despite the case and that his legal team had not been able to make certain arguments during the trial.“This was a jury of nine people who found you liable of sexual abuse. Do you think that that will deter women from voting for you?” Collins asked.
“No, I don’t think so because I think the whole thing—just so you understand—ready: I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump said.
Trump then gave an interpretation of Carroll’s claims about how the episode occurred, which stirred laughter from the live audience in attendance.
“I met her in the front door of Bergdorf Goodman. I was immediately attracted to her and she was immediately attracted to me. And we had this great chemistry. We’re walking into a crowded department store. We had this great chemistry. And a few minutes later, we end up in a room, a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, right near the cash register,” Trump said of her claims. “And then she found out that there were locks in the door. She said, ‘I found one that was open.’ She found one, she learned this at trial. She found one that was open. What kind of a woman meet somebody and brings them up and within minutes, you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room, okay?”
As the discussion went on Trump noted that the jury had specifically determined that he had not raped Carroll. The CNN moderator then noted the sexual abuse determination.
“I swear on my children—which I never do—I have no idea who this woman. This is a fake story, made up story,” Trump added. “We had a horrible Clinton-appointed judge. He was horrible. He allowed her to put everything in. He allowed us to put nothing in. This is a fake story.”
By continuing to deny having known Carroll, he could potentially expose himself to the same legal arguments that served as the premise for Carroll’s original defamation claim; claims for which Trump was already found liable. Carroll and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, discussed this very possibility in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday.
According to The NY Times, Kaplan said that “a decision would be made soon on whether Ms. Carroll will file another defamation suit in light of Mr. Trump’s comments on CNN.”
“Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” Kaplan told the publication.NTD News reached out to lawyers representing Trump, but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.
Trump Team Preparing Appeal
Because the original case was brought in civil court, Carroll was required to establish her battery claim by “a preponderance of the evidence” and her defamation claim by “clear and convincing evidence.” Both of these standards are lower than the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement to convict a defendant in a criminal case.Trump and his lawyers have already indicated they will appeal the original jury verdict.
One of Trump’s lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, has argued that the rape accusation was a crucial element of Carroll’s allegations and that the jury’s conclusion that Trump had not raped Carroll was significant.
“Strange verdict,” Tacopina told reporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday. “It was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that.”
“We’ll obviously be appealing those other findings,” Tacopina added.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent legal scholar who taught at Harvard Law School for 50 years, said Carroll’s case should never have been allowed to stand based on procedural grounds alone. Dershowitz specifically criticized allowing the case more than two decades after the alleged incident occurred.
“The historical purpose of a statute of limitations is to make sure you don’t have to stand trial for something that occurred 25 years ago—in this case, even more than that,” Dershowitz said. “How do you remember things? How do you know where you were? Maybe he was in Europe at the time. She hasn’t even given the dates and the times of the year.”
