NEW YORK – A writer who accused former President Donald Trump of rape filed an updated lawsuit against him Thursday in New York, minutes after a new state law went into effect allowing victims of sexual assault to file suit for assaults that occurred decades earlier.
E. Jean Carroll’s attorney filed the legal documents electronically as the Adult Survivors Act temporarily lifted the state’s customary timelines for sexual assault lawsuits. She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for pain and suffering, psychological harm, loss of dignity and damage to reputation.
Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle magazine, made the first claim in a 2019 book, saying Trump raped her in the dressing room of an upscale Manhattan department store in 1995 or 1996.
Trump responded to the book’s allegations by saying it could never have happened because Carroll “wasn’t my type.”
His comments prompted Carroll to file a defamation lawsuit against him, but that suit has been stalled in the appellate courts as judges decide whether he is protected from legal claims for comments made while he was president.
Previously, state law prevented Carroll from suing the alleged rape because too many years had passed since the incident.
However, the new New York law gives victims of sex crimes who have missed the deadlines associated with the statute of limitations a second chance to file a lawsuit. A window for such complaints will be open for one year, after which the usual terms will resume.
At least hundreds of lawsuits are expected, including many from women who say they were assaulted by colleagues, prison guards, health workers or others.
Alina Habba, Trump’s attorney, said in an email Thursday: “While I respect and admire the people who come forward, sadly this case is an abuse of the purpose of this law that sets a terrible precedent and risks delegitimizing credibility.” of real victims.
In his new complaints, Carroll alleges that Trump committed an assault “when he raped and forcibly groped her” and that he defamed her when she denied raping her last month.
Trump said in his statement that Carroll “completely fabricated the story that I met her outside a crowded department store in New York City and, within minutes, he ‘passed out’ for her. It’s a hoax and a lie, just like all the other hoaxes that have been pulled on me in the last seven years.”
Carroll’s newfound ability to sue Trump for rape could help her sidestep a potentially fatal legal flaw in her original defamation case.
If the courts finally found that Trump’s original derogatory comments on Carroll’s rape allegation were part of her job duties, as president, she wouldn’t be able to sue him for those comments, as federal employees are protected from the actions defamation lawsuits. That protection wouldn’t cover the things he did before he became president.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is presiding over Carroll’s defamation lawsuit filed three years ago, could decide to include the new allegations in a trial expected to take place in the spring.
Trump’s current attorneys said this week they don’t yet know if they will represent him against the new charges.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said in a court hearing this week that the new allegations shouldn’t require much more evidence. You already placed a copy of the new complaints in the original file last week. Trump and Carroll have also already been deposed.
In a statement about the new lawsuit, Kaplan said his client “intends to hold Donald Trump accountable for not only defaming her, but also sexually assaulting her, which he did years ago in a Bergdorf Goodman locker room.”
“Thanksgiving was the first day Ms. Carroll was able to bring a lawsuit under New York law, so our complaint was filed in court shortly after midnight,” she added.
Attorney Michael Madaio, a Trump attorney, said at the hearing that the new charges are significantly different from the original defamation suit and would require “an entirely new set” of evidence gathering.
