Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump gestures to his supporters during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, USA, March 9, 2024.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters
Donald Trump on Monday again denied E. Jean Carroll’s allegations that he raped and defamed her, even as he faces nearly $90 million in civil penalties for similar statements about the writer.
Carroll’s lawyer quickly responded that they were closely monitoring Trump’s recent comments about her – and suggested that the former president may face a third defamation lawsuit.
Trump claimed in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that several civil court rulings against him in New York – two of them in Carroll’s favor – would cause companies to leave the state.
“People don’t move to New York because they do this crap to me,” he said.
They were “the most ridiculous decisions,” Trump said, “including the ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, a person I had never met before.”
Carroll said Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
“I have no idea who she is, except for one thing: I was sued,” he said in the interview Monday. “From then on I said, ‘Wow, this is crazy what this is.'”
“I was indicted, I was given a false accusation and I had to post $91 million bail on a false accusation,” Trump added, referring to the bail he secured in recent days had to guarantee a verdict in Carroll’s favor.
The interview echoed comments Trump made about Carroll over the weekend at a campaign rally in Georgia, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee accused her of making “false accusations.”
After the CNBC interview aired, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said in a statement obtained by NBC News, “The statute of limitations for defamation is between one and three years in most jurisdictions.”
“As we said after the jury’s latest verdict, we continue to monitor every statement Donald Trump makes about our client E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said.
Attorney George Conway, a harsh critic of Trump who encouraged Carroll to file her first defamation lawsuit against him, said in a tweet Monday that the former president had faced a third lawsuit from the writer.
And since Trump’s comments were made on the CNBC show broadcast in Manhattan, Carroll could potentially sue him in the same New York federal court where she filed her two previous lawsuits, Conway wrote in this post on the social media site X.
“If she does so, the case would be assigned to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan as a case related to the two prior cases that resulted in $88.3 million in damages,” Conway wrote.
In a 2019 magazine article, Carroll publicly accused Trump of raping her for the first time.
She then sued him in federal court in Manhattan for libel after the then-president denied the rape allegations, accusing her of fabricating her account out of political animosity and a desire to boost sales of her books.
Carroll sued Trump again in the same court in late 2022 for assault related to the alleged rape and defamation related to new comments he made about her.
Trump, who has since left the White House, also referred to Carroll as “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman.”
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A jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages in the second case last May after she found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
In January, a different jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million for defaming Carroll in his comments about her rape allegations while he was president.
Trump is appealing the verdicts in both cases.
He posted bonds and cash totaling $97.2 million to secure the verdicts in Carroll’s favor while he appeals. The money and deposit he posted would be returned if he wins his appeals.
Trump separately faces a judgment totaling $454 million in damages and interest after losing a lawsuit from the New York attorney general’s office accusing him of civil business fraud.
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2024-03-11 17:21:04
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