The author who won millions of dollars from former President Donald Trump for defamation is going after him legally for doing it again.
E. Jean Carroll made a filing Monday in federal court in Manhattan demanding another $10 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, for remarks Mr. Trump made at a CNN town hall ridiculing her claims that he raped her.
According to a report in The New York Times, Monday’s new demand came as an amendment to a separate defamation lawsuit, which Ms. Carroll had filed in 2019 against Mr. Trump.
This case is under the purview of the same judge who heard the case decided earlier this month, but which appeals had sidetracked over claims by Mr. Trump that he was immune because the remarks were made as president. In 2019, Mr. Trump had poured scorn on Ms. Carroll’s then-new claims that he had raped her in the dressing room of a ritzy Manhattan store in the mid-1990s.
Monday’s filing seeks the compensatory and punitive damages over Mr. Trump’s discussion of the earlier lawsuit on May 10 on CNN, a day after a jury had awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million — $2 million for sexual abuse, and $3 million for defamation.
In that prime-time show, Mr. Trump called Ms. Carroll’s account “fake” and a “made-up story,” dismissed her as a “wack job,” and called the just-concluded trial “a rigged deal.”
The court filing on Monday, according to The Times, says that those statements “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite.”
“This conduct supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same,” the filing says.
Mr. Trump has filed notice of appeal against the verdict earlier this month. The jury rejected Ms. Carroll’s claims that Mr. Trump raped her, though it still held him liable for sexual abuse, and for defaming her.
Attorney Roberta A. Kaplan told The Times on Monday that Mr. Trump’s latest statements makes it essential that her client also push the other defamation case.
“It makes a mockery of the jury verdict and our justice system if he can just keep on repeating the same defamatory statements over and over again,” Ms. Kaplan said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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