Former President Donald Trump is countersuing E. Jean Carroll, claiming she defamed him on television.
Late Tuesday, Trump's lawyers filed papers insisting that the advice columnist who accused him of rape should pay an unspecified amount in damages and retract her statements.
The news comes a month after a jury unanimously found the former president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer.
Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages as a result of the verdict.
In the countersuit, Trump argues that Carroll's statement, in which she claimed in an interview that he raped her, after a jury held him responsible for sexual assault but not rape, was made "with actual malice and ill will, with the intention of causing severe and malicious harm to the counterclaimant's reputation."
Trump found liable for sexual abuse, to pay Carroll $5 million
A jury has unanimously found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her at least $5 million.
Additionally, attorneys urged a Manhattan federal court judge to dismiss Carroll's updated defamation claim seeking over $10 million in damages over comments he made at a CNN town hall in May. The new claim alleged Trump "doubled down" on derogatory remarks about Carroll when he publicly accused her of lying about being sexually assaulted by him at a New York City department store in the 1990s.
According to the Associated Press, in a statement in response to Trump's counterclaim, Carroll attorney Robbie Kaplan said that Trump "again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll by forcibly inserting his fingers into her vagina."
Additionally, Kaplan says that this is just an attempt to postpone the consequences of his actions and that "whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon."
