A federal judge in Manhattan last Tuesday granted a motion allowing E. Jean Carroll to amend her defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump to seek $10 million after Trump once again defamed her during a presidential town hall on CNN last month, NBC News reported.
In early May, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in her civil case against Trump, finding the former president liable for defamation and sexual abuse. However, the jury said the evidence presented at the trial failed to show that Trump raped Carroll.
That same evening, Trump appeared at CNN’s town hall in New Hampshire where, according to the amended complaint, he referred to Carroll as a “whack job” and claimed that he never met her. Trump also claimed that her allegations were “made up” and “fake,” according to the complaint.
After Trump’s town hall appearance, Carroll’s attorneys filed an amended complaint seeking additional damages. In the complaint, her attorneys said the former president doubled down on his previous defamatory statements.
Last Tuesday, while Donald Trump was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the 37-count indictment related to his retention of classified documents, District Judge Lewis Kaplan granted Carroll’s motion to amend her complaint.
In a statement after the judge’s decision, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) said they looked forward to “expeditiously” moving ahead on Carroll’s “remaining claims.”
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba said that Carroll should not have been allowed to “retroactively” amend her complaint “at the eleventh hour.”
In her 2019 book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” Carroll revealed that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room sometime in the mid-1990s.
In response to the book’s claim, then-President Trump denied the allegation and accused Carroll of being a liar, prompting her to sue him for defamation.
Carroll amended her lawsuit last year to include the alleged rape using a New York State law that permitted victims of sexual assault to sue their accusers in civil court after the statute of limitations was up so long as the lawsuit was filed before the end of 2022.
