Government

Trump Countersues E. Jean Carroll For Defamation

Sure, why not.

By Liz Dye on June 28, 2023 1:43 pm
trump eyes

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

If you find yourself drafting a motion where the defense is, “Your Honor, my client is a p***ygrabber, not a rapist,” maybe rethink, Alina.

Ever since the jury handed down a $5 million defamation and sex abuse verdict in Carroll II, the first of advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s tort suits against Donald Trump, the former president’s minions have been trying to spin it as a win.

“Donald Trump was not branded a rapist,” attorney Joe Tacopina blustered on the courthouse steps. “She claimed all along that she’d been raped by Donald Trump. That’s what this case was all about.”

Alan Dershowitz similarly tried to frame the panel’s conclusion that Trump had thrown Carroll up against a wall and digitally penetrated her against her will and then lied about it as a partial win, crowing that the jury only found Trump “liable on kinda molesting her,” and not rape itself.

As a PR strategy, it’s not the dumbest thing in the world. But as is their wont, Trump and his lawyers have mistaken this for a legal plan, and in their answer to Carroll’s amended complaint, have now added a counterclaim for defamation.

“Counterclaim Defendant’s actions of wantonly and falsely accusing the Counterclaimant on multiple occasions of committing rape constitute defamation per se, as Counterclaim Defendant accused Counterclaimant of rape, which clearly was not committed, according to the jury verdict in Carroll II,” they argue, adding that Carroll’s rape accusation was made “with actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack Counterclaimant’s reputation.”

This would appear to be actual malice based less on the NYT v. Sullivan standard than the case of Wee Feefees v. Vibes.

“Due to Counterclaim Defendant’s repeated falsehoods and defamatory statements made against the Counterclaimant, Counterclaimant has been the subject of significant harm to his reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an inordinate amount of damages sustained as a result,” Trump went on, without specifying exactly how a guy who was on tape bragging about grabbing women by the genitals, and was then found liable by a jury of grabbing a woman by the genitals, would be damaged by the implication that he had a propensity for sexual assault.

In response, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, a partner at Kaplan, Hecker & Fink, LLP, noted that all but one of the supposedly defamatory statements pointed to by Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba are time-barred:

Donald 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. Four out of the five statements in Trump’s so-called counterclaim were made outside of New York’s one-year statute of limitations. The other statement similarly will not withstand a motion to dismiss. 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.

Auspicious beginning!

Trump also asserted the same affirmative defenses he’s claimed all along: He was doing his job presidenting when he said Carrol was too unattractive to assault. Trump’s accusation that she was part of a Democratic hoax was “protected under the doctrine of presidential absolute immunity.” Something something privileges and immunities, “including, but not limited to, under the Constitution of the United States.”

And in the meantime, Trump appears to have lost the services of Joseph Tacopina, an experienced trial lawyer, leaving him with Habba, who spends much of her time on Newsmax spewing inanities.

And you thought the first Carroll trial was a shitshow!

Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.