Donald Trump may have just defamed writer E. Jean Carroll yet again following a $91.6 million bond that he posted in the aftermath of massive judgments against him including a New York jury deciding on $83.3 million in financial penalties on Trump for defaming her.
Carroll successfully accused Trump of defamation over his antagonistic responses to her account of the eventual president sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Carroll also brought civil claims directly covering that incident, and a jury also upheld most of that, with the combined penalties on Trump across two trials nearing $90 million. The bond that the ex-president was compelled to produce is greater than the amount of the underlying penalties and was required amid prospective appeals moving forward.
Some of Trump’s most recent comments about Carroll came at a campaign rally in Georgia. “During a long speech at his rally, attended by @nbcnews, he referenced the $91.63 million bond he posted yesterday to stay enforcement of the $83.3 million judgment Carroll obtained—and said it was “based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never [heard] of, I know nothing about her,”” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote Saturday night on X (Twitter).
She drew comparisons between the reported language used by Trump at this rally to the specific statements that drove earlier defamation proceedings against him. The statements that Carroll challenged across what became two trials were made both while Trump was in office and after he left the presidency.
“Trump thinks his 83.3 million buys him a license to endlessly defame Carroll,” ex-federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance opined on the same site.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, already indicated they were prepared for the possibility of bringing further legal action against Trump. Trump and his team lost before posting that massive bond in an attempt to get enforcement of the underlying penalties separately delayed.
