Trump is countersuing rape accuser E. Jean Carroll over her defamation lawsuit against him
- Trump is countersuing rape accuser E. Jean Carroll over her defamation case against him.
- The longtime advice columnist accused Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s.
Former President Donald Trump will countersue former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape, in her defamation lawsuit against him, Bloomberg News reports.
Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle Magazine, went public with her allegation of rape in her 2019 memoir, joining the over two dozen women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. Carroll says Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.
Carroll then sued Trump for defamation in federal court in November 2019 after the former president denied her allegations, made a dig at Carroll's appearance by describing her as "not my type," and accused her of inventing the story to sell more books.
"I am filing this on behalf of every woman who has ever been harassed, assaulted, silenced, or spoken up only to be shamed, fired, ridiculed and belittled," Carroll said in a statement along with the filing of the lawsuit. "No person in this country should be above the law – including the president."
Trump, according to Bloomberg, has asked to add a counterclaim suing Carroll for violating New York's law discouraging the filing of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, cases. In a court filing, Trump's lawyer described such cases as "ill-intentioned lawsuits — particularly those meant to discourage public participation or chill the free speech of others," Bloomberg reported.
"Trump sat on his hands for a year after the anti-SLAPP law was passed," Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan said about the counterclaim, according to Bloomberg. "While Trump may be notorious for using the courts to attack women he has assaulted, his latest gambit will not work — when it comes to E. Jean Carroll, the truth will prevail."
Trump filed a similar counterclaim in a lawsuit filed by another accuser, Summer Zervos, a one-time contestant on "The Apprentice" who also sued Trump for defamation in 2017 after he publicly denied her claim that he raped her. Zervos and his lawyers dropped the lawsuit against Trump in mid-November.