When a jury last year found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, Trump responded at a CNN town hall by going right on attacking Carroll \u2014 in much the same terms.<\/p>\n
So when it came time earlier this year for another jury to decide what Trump owes Carroll in a separate defamation lawsuit, Carroll\u2019s attorneys pleaded with jurors: Make sure it\u2019s enough to \u201cmake him stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second jury soon awarded Carroll $83.3 million. But it apparently wasn\u2019t enough to make Trump stop.<\/p>\n
And experts say Trump is now risking another major civil judgment against him.<\/p>\n
Trump has responded to securing a $91 million bond in the second case by re-upping his attacks on Carroll. And now Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan is suggesting there could be a third lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years,\u201d Kaplan said in a statement to The Washington Post. \u201cAs we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s latest comments \u2014 much like those in the May 2023 CNN town hall \u2014 bear lots of similarities to the ones for which he was originally found liable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just posted a $91 million bond \u2014 $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,\u201d Trump said Saturday at a rally in Rome, Ga. He added: \u201cNinety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn\u2019t know, never heard of. I know nothing about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump doubled down Monday morning on CNBC:<\/p>\n
Trump is nothing if not a master of repetition. But when it comes to defamatory comments, that\u2019s not really a good thing.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s line about \u201cMiss Bergdorf Goodman\u201d \u2014 a reference to the department store where, the first jury found, Trump had sexually abused Carroll \u2014 mirrors his October 2022 defamatory statement.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s line about \u201cfalse accusation[s]\u201d appeared in multiple comments deemed to be defamatory, including on June 21 and 22, 2019. In his 2022 statement, he called Carroll\u2019s claims a \u201ccon job\u201d and \u201ca Hoax and a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s line about not knowing Carroll also echoes each of the above comments.<\/p>\n
Trump also seemed to nearly say Monday that he had \u201cnever met\u201d Carroll, which he also said in June 2019. (There is photographic evidence of the two appearing together.)<\/p>\n
That Trump\u2019s comments have been so similar to one another was cited by the judge in the cases, Lewis Kaplan, in finding Trump liable the second time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that [October 2022] statement, like his 2019 statements, Mr. Trump denied Ms. Carroll\u2019s accusation, stated that he did not know her, and claimed that she had fabricated her accusations for ulterior and improper purposes,\u201d wrote Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta Kaplan.<\/p>\n
(Trump was actually held liable for the 2022 comments before the 2019 ones, given a legal dispute over whether Carroll could sue Trump for comments he made as a sitting president.)<\/p>\n
About the only key elements that Trump didn\u2019t repeat in recent days were that Carroll might have had ulterior motives \u2014 such as selling a book \u2014 and that she is \u201cnot my type,\u201d which he said in 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n
A defamation case generally involves showing not only that a comment was false but that it was offered with \u201cactual malice\u201d \u2014 i.e., knowing it was false or demonstrating a reckless disregard for the truth \u2014 and that the plaintiff was injured as a result of the comments.<\/p>\n
The first hurdle would seem easily cleared by Trump repeating such comments even after being found liable. The second would depend upon whether Carroll can show that the latest comments damaged her in some way.<\/p>\n
Defamation experts said Carroll would have a strong case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think this is a close call: Carroll could sue again on either or both claims, and should easily win again,\u201d Don Herzog of the University of Michigan Law School said in an emailed response to questions. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to use the words \u2018she is lying\u2019 to be calling her a liar; it\u2019s (more than) enough that he describes her accusation as false.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defamation lawyer Tre Lovell added that Trump continuing to say these things could push the punitive damages even higher \u2014 possibly into the hundreds of millions. The $83.3 million verdict came after the earlier verdict, which was for $5 million, only part of which was for defamation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact he continues to make the statements demonstrates the previous verdict was not enough to dissuade him from future defamation,\u201d Lovell said, adding: \u201cTrump\u2019s lawyers will argue that she has already been compensated for any emotional distress or general damages, or that since this is all old news it won\u2019t add any new damages to her. However, this doesn\u2019t affect the punitive-damages aspect, which can be extremely significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s continued attacks on Carroll are particularly perplexing given the cash crunch that he apparently faces. In addition to posting the $91 million bond, he faces coming up with $400-plus million in the financial fraud case in which he was also found liable. His attorneys recently attempted to reduce the amount of his bond in that case, while suggesting it would be too difficult to come up with the funds.<\/p>\n
Against that backdrop, repeating a version of comments already deemed to be defamatory would not seem like a great idea.<\/p>\n
But Trump has also made clear he\u2019s not exactly swayed by the advice of lawyers \u2014 or the legal system.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When a jury last year found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, Trump responded at a CNN town hall by going right on attacking Carroll \u2014 in much the same terms. So when it came time earlier this year for another jury to decide what Trump owes Carroll in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}