Former US President Donald Trump has countersued a columnist who was awarded $5million by a jury who found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Trump filed a counterclaim against his accuser E Jean Carroll late Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, claiming that she defamed him.
The filing raises comments Carroll made before and after the jury’s May 9 verdict.
It remarks include a CNN interview in which Carroll said that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.
Carroll ‘made these false statements with actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack (Trump’s) reputation, as these false statements were clearly contrary to the jury verdict’, states the filing.
Trump seeks a retraction and compensatory and punitive damages in amounts not specified.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan stated that’s Trump’s filing was ‘nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability’ for the verdict.‘
Donald Trump again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll,’ stated Kaplan.
‘But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon.’
