E. Jean Carroll, who this month won $5 million in damages from former President Donald J. Trump, has decided to ask for an additional amount in response to his insults on a CNN town hall the day after she won her case against him for sexual assault and defamation.
On May 9, the jury in her civil case determined that he was guilty of sexual assault and defamation. It commanded him to pay $2 million for the sexual abuse and $3 million for the defamation to Ms. Carroll, a former advice columnist and regular in Manhattan’s media circles.
The filing was submitted on Monday, and that is separate from the defamation action Ms. Carroll had brought in 2019 against Mr. Trump, 76, before the same judge who presided over the civil trial but had been delayed by appeals. After she claimed that he had sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the middle of the 1990s, Mr. Trump made remarks that year that led to the older lawsuit. The legal action is still pending.
Trump, who is running for president again, brought it up on CNN on May 10 and repeated his past denials of the incident, calling her claim “fake” and a “made-up story.” Despite a picture of them together, he continued to insist that he had never seen Ms. Carroll, 79, labeled her a “wack job,” and said the most recent civil trial was “a rigged deal.” The audience laughed and applauded Mr. Trump’s comments.
According to the court document from Monday, Mr. Trump’s slanderous comments on CNN after the ruling “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is difficult to imagine defamatory behavior that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite.” According to the complaint, Trump’s actions “support a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor to punish him, deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”
Her Monday filing asks Federal District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to allow her to amend her 2019 defamation lawsuit so that it will take into account both the jury’s decision against Mr. Trump as well as his statements on CNN and additional statements he made about Ms. Carroll on his Truth Social platform.
Mr. Trump continues to contest the jury’s verdict. Following the verdict, Joseph Tacopina, his attorney, submitted a notice of appeal.
