Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against accuser E. Jean Carroll was tossed Monday by a federal judge — in a ruling finding the writer’s statements that the former president raped her “were substantially true.”
Trump, 77, brought the counterclaims against E. Jean Carroll, 79, in June, arguing she falsely accused him of rape after a Manhattan federal jury only found him liable for sexual abuse in her civil case against him.
“The jury’s finding that Mr. Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms. Carroll implicitly determine the he forcibly penetrated her digitally — in other words, that Mr. Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law,” Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in the decision.
Carroll claimed at a May trial that the former president raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in the 1990s and then he later defamed her by claiming that he didn’t know her and that her allegations were a “hoax.”
The jury awarded her $5 million in damages against Trump in that case. Jurors did not find Trump liable of rape, but determined he should be on the hook for sexual abuse and defamation.
Trump, in his countersuit, “fails to plausibly to allege that Ms. Carroll’s statements were not true, and in the alternative, Ms. Carroll’s allegedly defamatory statements were substantially true as a matter of law,” Kaplan ruled.
The ex-president last month also lost his bid for a new trial in the sexual abuse civil case.
Carroll has an open suit against Trump alleging he defamed her in 2019 when she went public with her claims. That case is slated for trial in January 2024.
“We strongly disagree with the flawed decision and will be filing an appeal shortly,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement Monday about Kaplan’s ruling.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said her team was “pleased” that the judge dismissed Trump’s counterclaim.
“E. Jean Carroll looks forward to obtaining additional compensatory and punitive damages based on the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made in 2019,” she said in a statement.
Trump is also facing two federal indictments, as well as a criminal case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office over alleged “hush payments” made to former porn star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
In a separate ruling last week, Judge Kaplan also ruled that Carroll’s lawyers could turn over the deposition they took of Trump in her civil case to Manhattan prosecutors, who had issued a subpoena for the videotape and transcript of the sworn out-of-court testimony.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is set to go on trial in May 2024.
