« She may not hesitate to sue him again and have another jury impose an even larger punitive damage award. »
Donald Trump is flying increasingly close to the sun when speaking about writer E. Jean Carroll on the campaign trail — and a lawyer for the ex-Elle columnist suggested Monday he could get burned again.
During a Georgia campaign rally over the weekend, the former president repeated claims that Carroll « is not a believable person » and had pushed « false accusations » against him, despite his previous insistences of such resulting in multimillion-dollar judgments against him. The remarks came the day after Trump posted a $91.6 million bond to cover the $83.3 million awarded to Carroll for defamation earlier this year as he appeals the verdict.
“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,” Trump told the crowd in Rome, Georgia, according to NBC News.
“Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her,” he continued.
“She wrote a book, she said things,” Trump added. “And when I denied it, I said, ‘It’s so crazy. It’s false.’ I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.”
Carroll suing Trump again over his weekend remarks is « quite possible, » Bennett Gershman, a professor of law at Pace University and former New York prosecutor, told Salon.
« Trump’s accusation that Carroll is a liar is clearly defamatory and can result in further, and maybe a much larger monetary punishment against Trump, at least until he decides to end his vicious verbal assault on her, » Gershman said.
Whether that lawsuit materializes depends on whether Carroll has the « fortitude » to endure « another public spectacle » that places her under increased scrutiny, Gershman explained. If the writer feels Trump « has not yet been sufficiently rebuked and punished » by the previous judgments against him — and if Trump continues to malign her — « she may not hesitate to sue him again and have another jury impose an even larger punitive damage award, » he said.
The former president’s Saturday remarks were a repeat of his longtime denial of Carroll’s claims that he raped her in the dressing room of a New York City Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her by dubbing her claims a « hoax » and « con job.
