Former President Donald Trump on Saturday stood by his 2019 statement that writer E. Jean Carroll made a “totally false accusation” against him, despite similar claims resulting in him losing a defamation case in January.
Campaigning at a rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump referenced the $91.6 million bond he posted on March 8, three days before his deadline to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her in statements he made as president after denying her accusation that he’d raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Carroll first came forward in 2019 with sexual assault claims against Trump before another civil trial in May 2023, where a New York jury found that the former president sexually abused Carroll but didn’t rape her.
That’s not clickbait drama. That’s the heart and soul of this case.
The court has ruled TWICE now that Trump defamed Carroll. To claim in public the knowingly false statement that he did not defame her, is the very literally definition of defamation.