RECIDIVIST: How Trump set himself up for another E.Jean Carroll defamation case
The second, and potentially third, defamation cases against the former president by E. Jean Carroll are headed back to court.
Carroll and her attorney, Robbie Kaplan, say they’re looking into taking Trump back to court for continued defamation after a jury determined that he had sexually assaulted her, and that calling her a liar and denying the allegation was, therefore, an unlawful assault on her character.
Kaplan says that a case for someone continuing defamation after being found liable is unprecedented, but that she has a legal team looking into the details.
After a stern warning from the judge, Trump kept quiet about Carroll for most of the trial, but he blasted her again as the jury began their deliberations.
After they returned their verdict, he continued, accusing the judge and jury of being biased, and claiming that Carroll had lied, that the DNA on her dress had been exculpatory (though in fact he never surrendered a sample to compare), and accusing her of using it as a “threatening bluff.”
The next day he appeared on a CNN Town Hall, where he repeated unsupported allegations that Carroll used a racist name for her husband, and complained that the judge wouldn’t let his attorney smear her with that or her cat’s name (Vagina T. Fireball).
Then he mocked her story, retelling it in a way that insinuated Carroll was the instigator of sexual activity, and questioned “what kind of woman” she must be to behave so.
Kaplan told MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow:
“He is not going to get away with it another time. It’s unprecedented for a person to have been held liable in defamation to keep doing the defamation, so there aren’t a lot of cases we can look to for a playbook…but suffice to say I have a lot of lawyers who are very busy looking into this, and we are weighing all of our options.”
She also addressed their other standing case against Trump, one simply for defamation based on his verbal attacks on Carroll during his time as President, saying that she believes the current holdup — a legal determination of whether he was defaming her as part of his presidential duties, in which case he could not be held liable — will be settled quickly and the case will be a much simpler process since there’s already a jury determination that he did commit both sexual assault and defamation.
You can watch their entire interview below, then scroll on to see some of Trump’s continued attacks.
As the jury headed into deliberations on the morning of May 9, Trump tweeted to claim that it was a false accusation and an unfair trial.
He also falsely claimed to have been ‘silenced,’ though in fact he was only warned about trying to reach the jury with information that was not deemed admissible, and he was invited, but refused, to take the witness stand. There’s more below.
Trump swears on his children that he didn't assault E Jean Carroll pic.twitter.com/YyHDBSy2LZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 11, 2023
