E. Jean Carroll Demands $10 Million For Alleged Trump Comments Post-Verdict | USA

E. Jean Carroll, the columnist who won $5 million in sexual abuse and defamation damages against former President Donald Trump, is seeking at least $10 million more in a new court filing Monday seeking to hold him accountable for comments he made after the verdict.

Carroll’s attorneys filed an amended complaint in Manhattan seeking an additional $10 million in compensatory damages, and more in punitive damages. Carroll’s lawyers say Trump’s comments in response to her rape allegations ruined her reputation to the point that she lost her job of many years as a columnist for Elle magazine.

In the new version of the lawsuit, the lawyers claim that Trump “doubled down” on his derogatory comments about Carroll in an appearance on cable television a day after the verdict.

“Trump’s defamatory statements following the verdict show the depth of his malice towards Carroll, as it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could be more motivated by hate, ill will or spite. This conduct supports a very substantial punitive award in Carroll’s favor to both punish Trump, deter him from further smears, and deter others from doing the same,” the lawyers wrote.

A nine-person jury decided two weeks ago that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the early spring of 1996.

Carroll, who testified during the trial, first revealed in a 2019 book her claims that Trump raped her in a fitting room. The jury decided that Carroll had not proven that she had been raped, but determined that Trump had sexually abused her.

Joe Tacopina, Trump’s attorney, declined to comment on the new allegations.

The lawyers filed the new claims in modifying a defamation lawsuit that was put on hold while an appeals court decided whether Trump could be held liable for comments he made in 2019 while he was still president. The United States Department of Justice has supported the claims of its lawyers for the United States to be replaced as defendant.

In the new lawsuit, Carroll’s lawyers said that Trump, “unfazed by the jury’s verdict, persisted in maliciously smearing Carroll yet again” the next day during a “town hall” event hosted by CNN.

“He reaffirmed his previous defamatory statements, stating to an audience all too ready to cheer him that ‘I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,’ that he did not sexually assault Carroll and that his account – which had just been validated by a jury of Trump’s peers a day earlier – was a “false story” made up by a “crackpot.” Those remarks drew enthusiastic cheers and applause from the live television audience,” the lawyers wrote.