Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll meeting (photo included in Carroll’s court complaint), Trump (right) pictured in Miami on May 5, 2024 (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP)
An attorney for columnist E. Jean Carroll didn’t rule out another lawsuit after Donald Trump’s post on Memorial Day denying that he’d ever met Carroll, even as he acknowledged that there is a photo of them meeting, a photo of her that he once confused for his ex-wife Marla Maples during a deposition.
Trump, already found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll, observed Memorial Day on Truth Social by wishing a happy holiday to all — “including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country[.]”
The former president counted Carroll among his persecutors and rejected the idea that a photo of him meeting her counted as a meeting. First slamming Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the jurist in the Carroll cases, Trump next mentioned Carroll without naming her. He said the photo of him meeting Carroll more than two decades ago “doesn’t count!” and he put the word defamation in scare quotes to mock her cases.
“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION,”” the social media post said. “She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990’s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!), & sung my praises in the first half of her CNN Interview with Alison [sic] Cooper, but changed her tune in the second half – Gee, I wonder why (UNDER APPEAL!)? The Rape charge was dropped by a jury!”
Trump has not steered clear of making comments about Carroll since he was found civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation, resulting in a $83.3 million dollar judgment he is appealing.
In March, for example, Trump said on CNBC that Carroll, whom he called “Miss Bergdorf Goodman” (referring to the place she accused him of assaulting her), won her case based on a “fake story, totally made-up story.”
“91 million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about,” Trump said, sparking legal observers to opine that a third lawsuit was practically being written for Carroll’s lawyers.
But do Carroll’s attorneys see it that way?
“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today — all options are on the table,” Carroll lawyer Robbie Kaplan told Law&Crime on Tuesday when asked if a third lawsuit is on the horizon.
Also back in March, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit of his own after ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said on “This Week” that Trump had been “found liable for rape by a jury” in the Carroll case.
“It’s been affirmed by a judge,” Stephanopoulos said, referring to Judge Kaplan.
The Trump lawsuit emphasized that the jury verdict sheet in the Carroll case checked off “no” as to a rape finding, which seems to be what Trump was referring to on Truth Social when he said, “Rape charge was dropped by a jury!” (note: there wasn’t a criminal charge, as this was a civil case).
But as ABC’s motion to dismiss the case recently pointed out, Kaplan separately found that because forcible digital penetration is widely understood to be “rape,” regardless of what New York Penal law says, the jury “implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.”
“In short, there is no question that the Statements in suit—which repeat Judge Kaplan’s holdings that a jury found Trump liable for ‘rape’—were substantially accurate reports of court proceedings,” ABC’s lawyers said.
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