Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Former President Donald Trump is trying to turn the tables on the advice columnist who won a $5 million jury award against him in a sexual abuse lawsuit, saying in a countersuit that she owes him money and a retraction for continuing to insist she was raped even after a jury declined to agree.
Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate filed papers late Tuesday saying E. Jean Carroll should pay Trump unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and retract her damaging statements.
The countersuit comes a month after Carroll's lawyers filed a rewritten defamation lawsuit seeking at least $10 million more from Trump over comments he made after the jury verdict in May.
The jury concluded after a two-week trial that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in spring 1996. It also found that he defamed her in comments he made denying the attack last October.
But the jury rejected Carroll's claim, first made in a 2019 memoir, that Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.
At trial, Carroll testified that the rape occurred after a chance encounter with Trump at the midtown store, initially friendly and flirtatious, turned into a violent assault after they teased each other to try on a piece of lingerie.
Trump has consistently denied ever raping Carroll or knowing her. He said the department store encounter never happened.
In his countersuit, Trump's lawyers cited comments Carroll made in a CNN interview after May's verdict, saying that when she was questioned about the jury's finding that she was not raped, Carroll responded: “Oh yes he did, oh yes he did.”
And they said Carroll also revealed that when she spoke to Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately after the verdict, she said she told him emphatically: “He did it and you know it.”
The lawyers, Alina Habba and Michael T. Madaio, wrote that Carroll “made these statements knowing each of them were false or with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”
“The Interview was on television, social media and multiple internet websites, with the intention of broadcasting and circulating these defamatory statements among a significant portion of the public,” they added.
In a statement in response to Trump's counterclaim, Carroll attorney Robbie Kaplan said that 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 by forcibly inserting his fingers into her vagina.”
She said four of five statements cited by the counterclaim were made outside of the one-year statute of limitations when a claim must be made and predicted the other will be dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
“Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll. But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon,” Kaplan said. Kaplan is not related to the judge.
Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president again next year, did not appear at the initial trial. But extensive excerpts of his recorded deposition were played for jurors, along with an infamous video revealed shortly before Trump’s 2016 election in which he bragged that celebrities can grab women sexually without consent.
After scrutiny over the negative impact on the mental health of children, social media apps have begun adding stricter limitations to parental controls. Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focusing on recommendations for entertainment platforms, joined Cheddar News to talk about the changes, why they might not be enough, and what parents can do to help. "It's almost that the companies — whether they're Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, or whatever — have to start the process from the beginning of designing the product," he said. "They have to be much more clear about age verification so that a 12-year-old and 11-year-old can't get on there." Steyer also pushed for federal legislation to reign in the issue.
As Big Tech companies from the U.S. like Google and Apple managed to build market dominance overseas, the European Union has decided to curb what it sees as monopolistic growth. Greg Martin, the co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, joined Cheddar News to talk about how the impact of the antitrust regulations being adopted. "I think there's a lot of great outcomes here, but those will be far down the road [because] I do think there's some interoperability things that need to be worked out technologically," he said. "But it's going to be really good ultimately for the consumer in my opinion."
Tenicka Boyd is a digital creator making content that reflects her two passions: activism and style. The TikTok star joined Cheddar News to talk about her platform and new looks this Spring. Boyd admitted that at first she wanted to remain anonymous on the social media platform before finding her passion. "I just joined TikTok hoping that no one would find me, and I started creating colorful content," she said. "I didn't know that you could monetize this and really do it full time, and I just followed my passion because I realized that you can have multiple different lives and do multiple different things."
Catching you up on what you need to know on March 25, 2022, with Ukrainian forces retaking Kyiv, 300 deaths reported from the bombing of a theater used as a shelter in Mariupol, U.S. regulators ditch a climate review of natural gas projects, the 94th Academy Awards, and more.
North Korea says it test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile under the orders of leader Kim Jong Un, who vowed to continue expanding his nuclear arsenal while preparing for a “long-standing confrontation” with the United States.
Ukrainian authorities in the besieged ruins of Mariupol say that about 300 people died when a Russian airstrike blew up a theater where hundreds of civilians were sheltering.
Survivors of the Parkland School Shooting along with activists from March For Our Lives set up on the National Mall on Thursday. Their demonstration displayed 1,100 bodybags that spelled out the phrase “Thoughts and Prayers” to remind lawmakers that condolences are not enough and to push for action on guns. Each bag represented 150 lives lost due to gun violence. Trevon Bosley, a board member of March For Our Lives, joined Cheddar News to discuss the organization's return to Washington, DC. "The main thing bringing us back is that we have not seen anything being done on the national level for gun violence.” Bosley said. “We’re not seeing anything changed, and we’re not seeing lives being saved”
UK's prince William and his wife were met by protesters during their visit to Jamaica. Cheddar News speaks with political strategist Dee Dawkins-Haigler, who explains why the country's path to independence is relevant to Americans.
