Donald Trump sued for defamation by rape accuser E Jean Carroll after president branded her a liar
A COLUMNIST who has accused Donald Trump of rape has sued the president for defamation after he branded her a liar. E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, filed in New York on Monday, says Trump “smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity all in the national press”. The agony aunt columnist for Elle wrote in New York Magazine […]
A COLUMNIST who has accused Donald Trump of rape has sued the president for defamation after he branded her a liar.
E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, filed in New York on Monday, says Trump “smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity all in the national press”.
The agony aunt columnist for Elle wrote in New York Magazine that Trump raped her in a department store changing room in the 1990s.
But the President responded with an extraordinary denial – claiming he’d ever met her, despite 1987 photo showing them together.
He said in June that Carroll was “totally lying,” termed the accusation “fake news” and called her “not my type.”
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in the suit: “Nobody is entitled to conceal acts of sexual assault behind a wall of defamatory falsehoods and deflections.”
CLAIMS PILE UP
Carroll, 75, is among over a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct or sexual assault.
She says she bumped into the then-real estate developer in the high-end store Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 1995 or 1996.
He asked her to help him pick out a gift for “a girl” and eventually suggested lingerie, she claims.
Trump told Carroll to try on a see-through bodysuit, she alleges, and after a joking exchange they went into a dressing room.
She says Trump then pushed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and raped her as she struggled, eventually broke free and fled.
Carroll said there were no attendants in the dressing room area.
She didn’t file a police report but said she did tell two journalist friends. Both have corroborated that they were told.
‘HARMED REPUTATION’
The suit – which seeks unspecified damages – says Trump harmed Carroll’s reputation and career.
President Trump and his lawyers are yet to respond to the suit.
The White House strongly denied the claims in a statement to the magazine at the time the claims first emerged.
A spokesman said: “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”
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Carroll is not the only one to sue the president over his denials of sexual wrongdoing.
A case filed by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, is ongoing in the same Manhattan courthouse where Carroll has filed her claim.
In Zervos’ case, Trump’s lawyers have said his statements weren’t defamatory, and they have tried unsuccessfully so far to get the suit dismissed or at least delayed until he is no longer in office.
