After Donald Trump on Monday again denied rape and defamation claims successfully brought against him by E Jean Carroll, a lawyer for the writer said “all options are on the table”.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, has previously suggested that she could file a third defamation lawsuit against the ex-president for comments he has continued making against Carroll.
During the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social a long rant about his various civil and criminal court entanglements, including litigation leveled against him by Carroll. In April, a federal judge upheld a jury’s decision to award Carroll $83.3m and denied Trump a new trial.
“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country,” he wrote. He referred to Caroll as “a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!)”.
“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!) … The Rape charge was dropped by a jury!”
Carroll has filed and won two defamation lawsuits against Trump, who she said sexually abused her in a New York department store changing room in 1996. In the lawsuits, Carroll said that Trump’s accusations that she is lying about the case had ruined her reputation.
Trump, who is appealing both cases, appears to be undaunted by the fact that Carroll has already had success in court against him and continues to make comments disparaging her credibility.
In March, Trump told CNBC that “this woman is not a believable person”. He called Carroll “Ms Bergdorf Goodman”, referring to the department store where Carroll said Trump abused her.
“I have no idea who she is,” Trump said in March.
In response to those comments, Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said that “the statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years”.
“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client,” Kaplan said.
On Monday, Kaplan responded to Trump’s Memorial Day comments, appearing to reiterate her statement from earlier in the spring that suggested she could help Carroll pursue yet another defamation lawsuit against the former president.
“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table,” Kaplan said. “And that remains true today – all options are on.”
