Trump said Carroll was “not my type.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Donald Trump has filed a counterclaim against author E. Jean Carroll for defamation after she alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.
- When Carroll originally filed her lawsuit in 2019, Trump said at the White House, “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.”
- The jury did not find that Trump raped Carroll, but did find that he sexually abused her.
- Trump is now suing Carroll for making “false statements” following a jury’s order that Trump pay $5 million for battery and defamation.
- Carroll’s alleged “false statements” occurred during an interview with CNN wherein she told the outlet, “Oh yes he did, oh yes he did,” when discussing whether or not Trump raped her.
- The jury’s verdict regards Carroll’s second defamation lawsuit against Trump from 2022 in response to Trump writing on Truth Social that Carroll’s declarations were a “hoax and a lie.”
- The verdict caused Carroll to be “overwhelmed with joy and happiness and delight for the women in this country,” she explained to NBC News.
- Carroll noted that the lawsuit was “not about the money” but “about getting my name back.”
FROM THE COUNTERCLAIM:
- The counterclaim alleges that Carroll knew her statements were “false” and were made with “reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”
- “Counterclaim Defendant made these false statements with actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack Counterclaimant’s reputation, as these false statements were clearly contrary to the jury verdict in Carroll II whereby Counterclaimant was found not liable for rape by the jury,” the counter-lawsuit adds.
- Trump’s lawyers add that Carroll’s claims resulted in “significant harm to [Trump’s] reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an inordinate amount of damages sustained as a result.”
- The lawsuit then orders Carroll to retract her defamatory statements against Trump and awards him “compensatory and punitive damages as a result of Plaintiff’s defamatory statements made against the Defendant.”
BACKGROUND:
- E. Jean Carroll is suing Trump for another $10 million for defamation.
- The trial for the case is to occur in January 2024.
- Trump took to Truth Social to share his thoughts on the matter, posting, “I don’t know E. Jean Carroll, I never met her or touched her (except on a celebrity line with her African American husband who she disgustingly called the “Ape,”), I wouldn’t want to know or touch her, I never abused her or raped her or took her to a dressing room 25 years ago in a crowded department store where the doors are LOCKED, she has no idea when, or did anything else to her, except deny her Fake, Made Up Story, that she wrote in a book. IT NEVER HAPPENED, IS A TOTAL SCAM, UNFAIR TRIAL!”
- Trump continued, “The Carroll case is part of the Democrats playbook to tarnish my name and person, much like the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, the 51 Intelligence Agents, FBI/Twitter Files, and so much more. It is being funded and tried by Democrat operatives, although this was denied by them, and when they got caught in the lie, the Clinton appointed judge would not let us use it in trial. Time will prove him to be highly partisan & very unfair. Where’s the dress she said she had?”
