Judge rules E. Jean Carroll can seek more damages after Trump CNN remarks

E. Jean Carroll, an author and advice columnist who last month won a $5 million lawsuit against Donald Trump in a sexual assault and defamation case, can amend a separate pending lawsuit to seek more damages against the former president for disparaging comments he made during a recent CNN town hall, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Attorneys for Carroll filed an amended complaint following Trump’s comments during the May 10 CNN special event, seeking at least $10 million in damages for the town hall comments and for the initial defamation that Carroll alleged. It arrives the same day Trump appeared in a federal court in Miami and pleaded not guilty to 37 counts, including obstruction of justice and willful retention of classified documents. The ruling was posted almost exactly as the arraignment in Miami concluded.

The lawsuit was originally filed over comments Trump made about Carroll in 2019, when he was president and she had first publicly accused him of a decades-old sexual assault. The lawsuit has been delayed by appellate litigation having to do with whether Trump is shielded from liability because he was president at the time he made those comments.

The 79-year-old filed a second lawsuit last year under a new law in New York, and in May a civil jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed her. Carroll testified during the trial that Trump violently assaulted her in the mid-1990s and years later unleashed further trauma by ridiculing her as a liar once she spoke out.

[Trump pleads not guilty in historic court appearance on charges he hoarded secret documents]

A day after the verdict, Trump repeated some of his previous remarks about Carroll in the prime-time CNN event. Trump, who is running for office again, said that he had never met her before, that she was lying and that she was mentally unstable.

In an email to The Washington Post, Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, praised the judge’s decision.

“We look forward to moving ahead expeditiously on E. Jean Carroll’s remaining claims,” Kaplan said.

Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement, “We maintain that she should not be permitted to retroactively change her legal theory, at the eleventh hour, to avoid the consequences of an adverse finding against her.”

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The Washington Post’s Kim Bellware, Mark Berman, Isaac Arnsdorf and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.