Donald Trump sues E. Jean Carroll for defamation

() — Donald Trump is suing E. Jean Carroll for defamation after a jury found that he sexually abused a former magazine columnist and defamed her.

In a countersuit filed Tuesday night, Trump alleges that Carroll defamed him when he appeared on the morning after the jury awarded him $5 million in damages. Carroll was asked about the verdict, according to which Trump sexually abused Carroll but did not rape her, as she alleged. Carroll responded, “Oh, yes he did.”

In response to the new lawsuit, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement: “Donald Trump again argues, against logic and facts, that he was exonerated by a jury that found he sexually abused E .Jean Carroll”.

He added: “Trump’s filing is therefore nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already determined was his smear of E. Jean Carroll. But like it or not, that accountability will come very soon.

The countersuit is the latest legal offensive in a multi-year legal battle between Trump and Carroll. The first time Carroll sued Trump for defamation was in 2019, after the former president denied her allegation that he had raped her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. Trump said that he did not know Carroll and that she was not his type.

She sued him again last year under a New York law that allowed a one-year deadline for civil lawsuits by survivors of sexual assaults, regardless of when they occurred. Trump requested a new trial.

The 2019 defamation lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial next year, though there are still several pending legal issues. Carroll is seeking more than $10 million in damages in that case, in part because Trump repeated statements the jury found defamatory after the verdict on social media and on a townhall.