NEW YORK –
Former President Donald Trump, in an attempt to turn the tide against the sentimental advice columnist who won him a $5 million sexual assault lawsuit, has sued her in turn, saying he owes her money and a retraction for continuing to say that he raped her despite a jury refusing to accept it.
Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate filed the documents Tuesday, saying E. Jean Carroll must pay him an unspecified amount in damages and penalties and retract his damaging claims.
A month ago, Carroll’s lawyers filed a defamation lawsuit seeking at least $10 million more from Trump for statements he made after the jury’s verdict in May.
The jury found after a two-week trial that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in the dressing room of a high-end department store in the spring of 1996. It also found that he defamed her in statements he made in October denying the assault.
But the jury rejected Carroll’s claim in a 2019 memoir that Trump raped her in the locker room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman.
At trial, Carroll testified that the rape occurred after a chance encounter with Trump in the store, which after a friendly and flirtatious start turned into a violent assault when they challenged each other to don an undergarment.
Trump has consistently denied that he raped Carroll or even met her, and that the encounter at the store did not occur.
In their countersuit, Trump’s lawyers cite Carroll’s statements to CNN after the verdict. When told that the jury found there was no rape, Carroll replied, “yes he did, yes he did.”
And they added that when Carroll spoke to Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, immediately after the verdict, he emphatically told him: “He did it and you know it.”
The attorneys, Alina Habba and Michael T. Madaio, wrote that Carroll “made these statements knowing that they were false or with complete disregard for their truth or falsehood.”
2023-06-29 09:15:44
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