E. Jean Carroll seeks to amend other Trump lawsuit for his reaction to battery verdict
Written by ABC AUDIO on May 22, 2023
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s words about writer E. Jean Carroll may, again, come back to haunt him.
Carroll’s attorneys sought on Monday to amend her initial defamation lawsuit against Trump, filed in 2019, to account for allegedly defamatory statements he made about her after a jury found him liable for battery and defamation in a second lawsuit that the former Elle magazine columnist filed against him last November.
There was no immediate response from Trump or his lawyers.
Carroll’s first suit has been tied up on legal technicalities and, in the new court filing, her lawyers sought a judge’s permission to include Trump’s words after the May 9 verdict against him.
“Immediately after the verdict was announced, Trump began lashing out in response. He started by posting various messages and videos on his Truth Social account decrying the verdict, and disparaging Carroll, the jury, and the judicial system more generally,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote.
They wrote that “mere minutes after the verdict became public, Trump repeated the defamatory lie that he had no idea who Carroll was and again claimed that her accusation of sexual assault was politically motivated: ‘I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!'”
Carroll is seeking additional punitive damages if her first suit ultimately moves forward and is successful.
Earlier this month, Trump signaled his intent to appeal the verdict in Carroll’s battery and defamation suit.
A jury in that case ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million in damages.
She said in her battery suit that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her account “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.
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