Donald Trump is flying increasingly close to the sun when speaking about writer E. Jean Carroll on the campaign trail — and a lawyer for the ex-Elle columnist suggested Monday he could get burned again.
During a Georgia campaign rally over the weekend, the former president repeated claims that Carroll "is not a believable person" and had pushed "false accusations" against him, despite his previous insistences of such resulting in multimillion-dollar judgments against him. The remarks came the day after Trump posted a $91.6 million bond to cover the $83.3 million awarded to Carroll for defamation earlier this year as he appeals the verdict.
“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,” Trump told the crowd in Rome, Georgia, according to NBC News.
“Ninety-one million 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,” he continued.
“She wrote a book, she said things,” Trump added. “And when I denied it, I said, ‘It’s so crazy. It’s false.’ I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.”
Carroll suing Trump again over his weekend remarks is "quite possible," Bennett Gershman, a professor of law at Pace University and former New York prosecutor, told Salon.
"Trump’s accusation that Carroll is a liar is clearly defamatory and can result in further, and maybe a much larger monetary punishment against Trump, at least until he decides to end his vicious verbal assault on her," Gershman said.
Whether that lawsuit materializes depends on whether Carroll has the "fortitude" to endure "another public spectacle" that places her under increased scrutiny, Gershman explained. If the writer feels Trump "has not yet been sufficiently rebuked and punished" by the previous judgments against him — and if Trump continues to malign her — "she may not hesitate to sue him again and have another jury impose an even larger punitive damage award," he said.
The former president's Saturday remarks were a repeat of his longtime denial of Carroll's claims that he raped her in the dressing room of a New York City Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her by dubbing her claims a "hoax" and "con job." Those comments earned him a $5 million judgment last May after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The separate case that yielded the $83.3 million damages, which concluded in January, revolved around similar remarks Trump made about Carroll while he served as president. Trump is appealing both cases.
He threw more attacks at Carroll during a Monday morning phone interview with CNBC, according to The New York Times, mocking Carroll as "Miss Bergdorf Goodman" and calling the judgments "ridiculous."
"These comments demonstrate that Trump just doesn’t care and will continue to repeat the lies so long as it helps him with his political base," Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor, told Salon. "He has utter disregard for the jury’s verdict and rulings of the court. For him, this is just a business expense of being Donald Trump."
Trump appears "unhinged and out of control" in his reactions to Carroll's accusations and doesn't seem to understand he "cannot bully and defame everybody" or that people will hold him to political and legal account, Gershman added.
When asked on MSNBC if Trump had defamed Carroll again in his Saturday tirade, former Obama-administration acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Carroll would be "absolutely within her rights" to bring a third lawsuit against the former president, according to HuffPost.
“Remember, Trump lost in front of a jury of his peers on this question of whether he had defamed E. Jean Carroll and now he is doing it again,” Katyal added. “And I’m sure she is sitting there scribbling it all down and ready to go.”
A lawyer for Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, suggested in a statement to The New York Times Monday that her client was considering bringing another defamation lawsuit against the former president.
“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, echoing a similar remark from another Carroll attorney earlier this year.
Kaplan's statement makes it seem far more likely a third lawsuit will follow, David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University, told Salon.
Schultz and Gershman expect that, should Carroll proceed with another complaint and trial, Trump will receive much steeper punitive damages than previously adjudged as the court attempts to further deter him from maligning her.
"Most normal people would see the futility of their continued resistance to court orders and vast punitive damage awards," Gershman said. "But Trump is not a normal litigant as we know from his numerous legal setbacks - bankruptcies, phony charities, fraudulent college initiatives, and of course the N.Y. civil fraud conviction.
"So continuing to attack Carroll stems from his need not to appear weak at the hands of a strong and determined woman," he continued.
Given Trump's previously reported financial peril amid his scrambles to ratchet up bonds for Carroll's award and his $454 million civil fraud judgment, plus his continued inflammatory commenting on the writer, Schultz doesn't believe another massive monetary punishment will actually work as a deterrent.
Instead, he suspects Trump's repeated jabs at the former columnist while campaigning — including arguments that the cases were "politically motivated" — are part of a greater strategy.
Trump wants to evoke a Federal Election Commission "but-for rule" on campaign donation uses by repeatedly claiming election interference so that the commission will allow him to use the funds to cover his legal bills, Schultz said.
"I think what he may be counting on is either, A, the Federal Election Commission rules in his favor when he says, 'Okay, I'm going to use campaign funds for this," he said. Alternatively, Trump could be aiming to install enough people to the FEC should he be elected in November that they will conclude his legal battles are campaign-related and relieve him of the payments.
It's possible Trump could be aiming for a similar result with the Republican National Committee after his friend and daughter-in-law ascended to leadership roles last week, Schultz speculated.
"If he can keep saying, 'This is all political,' he's laying the groundwork for him not to be personally responsible for this," he said.
