Trump’s countersuit is the latest twist in a circuitous, multicourt legal battle over Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her.
Donald Trump, who was found liable by a civil jury last month for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, filed a countersuit alleging she has defamed the ex-president by continuing to say he raped her in New York in the mid-1990s.
« Oh yes he did, oh yes he did, » Caroll said during a CNN interview on May 10, reiterating her allegation that Trump raped her.
A day earlier, a jury in U.S. District Court Manhattan awarded Carroll $5 million in damages from Trump.
Trump’s new counterclaim hinges on the fact that the jury did not find by a preponderance of the evidence that he raped her, even as it found he sexually abused her during their encounter in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s.
Due to Carroll’s « repeated falsehoods and defamatory statements, » Trump « has been the subject of significant harm to his reputation, » wrote Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba in the counterclaim filed Tuesday night.
The alleged rape « clearly was not committed, according to the jury verdict, » Habba wrote.
But Carroll’s attorneys said that is not true.
Carroll’s lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, in a statement said, « Donald Trump again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll.
