Trump’s attorney says E. Jean Carroll’s case should not be changed
E. Jean Carroll should not be allowed to amend her pending defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump because it would “seriously and unreasonably disadvantage” him, his attorneys argued Friday.
Advice columnist Ask E. Jean should be barred from amending her 2019 defamation lawsuit to add bitter comments from Trump after Carroll won $5 million in her sex abuse and defamation case on May 9 argued Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, in a letter to a Manhattan federal judge.
A lawyer for the 79-year-old writer asked the judge last week to allow Carroll to update her ongoing case – arguing that Trump had called her “a complete moron” and her case “a rigged one” the night after the sentencing Deal,” which further proves the gravity of punitive damages against him.
But Habba says Carroll’s attempt to amend her open complaint is just an “eleventh” attempt to make it more consistent with the jury’s verdict.
The jury did not find Trump responsible for raping Carroll, but for sexually abusing her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s and subsequently defaming her when she went public.
“To be clear, the jury…concluded that the alleged rape did not occur,” Habba wrote.
“Indeed the whole thing [open case] contains allegations of allegedly defamatory statements arising out of that very allegation – not alleged sexual assault.”
Carroll’s proposed amended complaint “replaces any reference to the word ‘rape’ and replaces it with ‘sexual assault’ in a thinly veiled attempt to reconcile the pending case with the closed case,” Habba alleges.
Habba said the updated lawsuit would “seriously and unreasonably disadvantage” Trump.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said last week that Trump’s recent statements against Carroll support “a very large punitive damages award to Carroll to punish Trump, to deter him from further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”
In the closed case, the jury concluded that Trump had defamed Carroll in a lengthy October 2022 post on his social media platform Truth Social, claiming he did not know her and calling her claims a “hoax.” .
Her open defamation case seeks damages for statements Trump made during his tenure after she made her allegations in June 2019.
Trump has claimed that he enjoys presidential immunity in this case.
Lawyers for both sides did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
