E Jean Carroll files for new damages after Donald Trump’s CNN town hall remarks

Author and columnist E Jean Carroll is going back to court to demand “very substantial” additional damages from former US president Donald Trump for the disparaging remarks he made about her during a televised CNN town hall just a day after he was found liable in a civil case for sexually assaulting her.

Ms Carroll made a filing in federal court in New York on Monday, the New York Times reported.

On May 9th, a New York jury ruled that Mr Trump had sexually abused the advice columnist in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago. It also awarded about $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages: about $2 million on the sexual abuse count and close to $3 million for defamation, for branding her a liar.

The following night, during a live town hall where Mr Trump was interviewed on CNN in New Hampshire, he further and repeatedly insulted and demeaned Ms Carroll and her experiences.

Mr Trump said her account of a sexual assault, in the case which he is appealing, was “fake” and a “made-up story” and referred to it as “hanky-panky”. He repeated past claims that he’d never met Ms Carroll and considered her a “whack job”.

On Monday, Ms Carroll made a filing in federal court in New York that aims to inflict a further financial penalty against Mr Trump for those remarks, claiming they are defamatory.

The filing claimed Mr Trump’s statements at the televised town hall “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite” and demanded “a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation and to deter others from doing the same”.

Ms Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the New York Times on Monday evening that Mr Trump’s remarks on CNN “makes a mockery of the jury verdict and our justice system” if the former president was allowed to get away with repeating defamatory statements. – Guardian