E. Jean Carroll seeks new damages from Trump after comments during CNN town hall

NEW YORK — Attorneys for columnist E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million in damages in a defamation suit against Donald Trump earlier this month, filed an amended lawsuit on Monday seeking more damages against the former president. The filing was in response to comments made after the verdict during a CNN town hall.

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Monday’s request was made in a letter regarding a separate defamation lawsuit that Carroll had filed in 2019 against Trump, 76, according to The New York Times. The case is before the same judge who presided over the civil trial, according to the newspaper.

The filing in a Manhattan federal court seeks to increase the financial amount awarded to Carroll, the Times reported. The jury in Carroll’s civil case on May 9 found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, according to the newspaper. The amended lawsuit seeks at least $10 million in compensatory damages, according to The Associated Press.

The jury awarded Carroll $2 million for the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation earlier this month.

Carroll, 79, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at a luxury department store in New York in the spring of 1996 and said he defamed her after he called her a liar when she later went public with the allegations.

On May 10, Trump, who is aiming to regain the presidency in 2024, appeared on a CNN town hall program in New Hampshire and repeated his denials about the alleged assault, the Times reported. Trump called Carroll’s account of the alleged assault “fake” and a “made-up story,” according to the newspaper.

During the program, Trump called Carroll a “wack job” and called the recent civil trial “a rigged deal.”

Carroll, who testified during the trial, wrote in a 2019 memoir that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, but the jury rejected that claim, according to the AP.

Joe Tacopina, a Trump lawyer, declined to comment on the new claims.

According to court documents filed on Monday, Carroll’s attorneys argued that Trump’s statements after the verdict “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.”