Given recent events, it’s tempting to think Donald Trump would want nothing to do with E. Jean Carroll and would make every effort to steer clear of the writer. As NBC News reported, however, that’s apparently not the course the former president and his lawyers have in mind.
Former President Donald Trump countersued writer E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday, claiming in a court filing that Carroll defamed him on television. … Carroll’s attorney, Robbie Kaplan, said in a statement that Trump’s claim is “nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E. Jean Carroll.”
At this point, the number of cases is probably getting a little confusing, so let’s take a moment to review our earlier coverage and untangle the threads.
Carroll spent years as a prominent writer, media figure and advice columnist, including having hosted a show on America’s Talking, which later became MSNBC (my employer). Three years ago, she also joined a long list of women who’ve accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
Carroll described an alleged encounter in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, which the writer described as a violent sexual assault committed by the future president. The writer said she confided in two friends shortly after the alleged incident, telling them at the time what she said occurred. Soon after, those friends came forward with on-the-record accounts.
The former president didn’t just deny the claim, he also argued, among other things, that Carroll is a “liar” who isn’t his “type.”
A defamation case soon followed, and last month, she prevailed: A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, and jurors awarded the writer $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims. The jury did not, however, find the defendant liable for rape.
The next day, the Republican participated in a town hall event on CNN and insisted anew that Carroll peddled “a fake story,” adding, “[S]he is a whack job.” Or put another way, literally one day after Carroll won a defamation case against Trump, he thought it’d be a good idea to go on national television and go after her rhetorically once more.
At that point, Carroll and her lawyer updated a separate defamation lawsuit over comments Trump made about her in 2019. That case is still pending as courts consider whether he can be sued over comments he made during his tenure as president.
But on the same day as the town hall event, Carroll also appeared on CNN and was asked how she felt when the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not rape. “Well, I just immediately [said] in my own head: ‘Oh, yes, he did. Oh yes, he did,’” Carroll responded. And that sentence, according to the former president’s lawyers, defamed Trump — which is why the Republican is now suing Carroll, seeking a retraction and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Legal experts can speak with more authority than I can about the likely outcome of such a case, and whether the former president will be able to prove that Carroll did significant harm to his reputation during the on-air interview. I will, however, note for context that Team Trump was sanctioned last fall for filing frivolous litigation. Indeed, a federal judge has already concluded once that the Republican operation filed “political grievances masquerading as legal claims.” There’s no reason to assume this won’t happen again.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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