Trump Can’t Stop Trashing E. Jean Carroll—And She’s Watching All of It

  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Donald Trump may have just landed himself in hot water—again—over E. Jean Carroll, as the former president simply cannot accept that he lost both of her lawsuits against him.

Trump appeared Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and he promptly took aim at Carroll. He called her “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman,” referring to the store where he assaulted her, and said her story was a “false allegation” and that he had never met her before.

Just two days prior, during a rally in Georgia, Trump told supporters he had been forced to post bond on a “totally made up story.”

Based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of it. I know nothing about her,” Trump continued.

He also claimed Carroll’s lawyers are “Democratic operatives” and the presiding judge—with whom Trump and his lawyers repeatedly clashed—was a “disaster.”

Trump posted a whopping $91.6 million bond last week, which covers the $83.3 million he was ordered to pay in damages for defaming Carroll and interest for putting off payment for so long. Trump only just beat the deadline to post: Had he waited one more business day, Carroll’s lawyers could have started seizing his assets to collect.

But now, Trump has handed Carroll’s legal team fresh ammunition. The day after Trump’s comments in Georgia, legal analyst Lisa Rubin said since Trump had made the comments after he posted bond, it would be difficult to keep penalizing him for the same lawsuit.

“Should E. Jean Carroll and her team want any further relief now, their only option is to file another case,” Rubin said on MSNBC’s The Weekend.

“I think her recourse here is to sue again or at the very least to oppose the bond.”

Carroll’s attorneys sent a letter Monday to presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan indicating that they do not oppose the bond. But Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) has indicated that they haven’t ruled out a third defamation lawsuit.

The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years,” Kaplan told reporter Maggie Haberman. “As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll.”

Carroll’s other lawyer, Shawn Crowley, had also hinted that there might be another lawsuit in Trump’s future. “We’re watching, we’re listening,” she said in February. “We had really hoped that, as I think the jury found, that $83 million would maybe be enough to convince him to keep E. Jean Carroll’s name out of his mouth. Apparently, he showed us this weekend that he really cannot control himself and that maybe it wasn’t.”