Judge tosses Trump’s defamation suit against writer E Jean Carroll
By Jennifer Peltz
New York: A federal judge tossed out former US president Donald Trump’s countersuit against the writer who won a sex abuse lawsuit against him, ruling on Monday that Trump can’t claim she defamed him by continuing to say she was not only sexually abused but raped.
The ruling shuts down, at least for now, Trump’s effort to turn the legal tables on E. Jean Carroll, who won a $US5 million ($7.6 million) judgment against him in May and is pursuing her own defamation suit against him. Trump lawyer Alina Habba said his lawyers would appeal “the flawed decision” to dismiss his counterclaim.
Former President Donald Trump.Credit: AP
Carroll’s lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, said she was pleased with the ruling and looking ahead to a trial scheduled in January in her defamation suit, which concerns a series of remarks that Trump has made in denying her sexual assault allegation.
“E. Jean Carroll looks forward to obtaining additional compensatory and punitive damages” in that trial, Kaplan said.
Carroll accused Trump of trapping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, forcibly kissing her, yanking down her tights and raping her as she tried to fight him off.
He denies any of it happened, even that they ran into each other at the store. He has called her, among other things, a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.
E. Jean Carroll arrives at court in May.Credit: AP
In the earlier trial, a civil court jury concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll but rejected her claim that he raped her. Legally, the difference depended on specifics of how, in the jury’s view, he penetrated her against her will.
When a CNN interviewer asked her what was going through her mind when she heard the rape finding, Carroll responded, “Well, I just immediately say in my own head, ‘Oh, yes, he did. Oh, yes, he did.’” She also said she had told one of Trump’s lawyers that “he did it, and you know it”.
Trump then sued Carroll, saying her statements were defamatory. He sought a retraction and money.
“These false statements were clearly contrary to the jury verdict,” the lawyers argued in court papers, saying the panel had found that rape “clearly was not committed”.
Carroll’s lawyers said that her post-verdict statements were “substantially true”. So did the judge.
“The difference between Ms Carroll’s allegedly defamatory statements – that Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as defined in the New York Penal Law – and the ‘truth’ — that Mr Trump forcibly digitally penetrated Ms Carroll — are minimal,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in the ruling. “Both are felonious sex crimes.”
“Indeed, both acts constitute ‘rape’” as the term is used in everyday language, in some laws and in other contexts, added Kaplan, who isn’t related to Carroll’s lawyer.
AP
Trump is embroiled in seven cases in several jurisdictions involving:
- Four counts, including three of conspiracy, relating to an effort to overturn the 2020 election which led to the January 6 Capitol riots; first hearing scheduled for August 28, 2023, Washington
- Alleged “persistent and repeated business fraud” at his Trump Organisation, October 2023 trial, New York
- Writer E Jean Carrol’s second defamation trial on January 15, 2024, New York (Trump’s countersuit was thrown out on August 8.
- A lawsuit by four investors who claim losses from an alleged pyramid scheme involving a phone company promoted by Trump on The Apprentice. The claim is now against Trump alone, as claims against his children were dropped after they gave dispositions. Trial starts on January 29, 2024, New York
- 34 counts relating to alleged hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, trial set for March 25, 2024, New York
- 40 counts relating to classified documents kept at his residence, May 20, 2024 trial, Florida
- Alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election Georgia college vote, Georgia
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