E. Jean Carroll can seek more damages against Trump, judge says

Author E. Jean Carroll can amend her original defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump to include comments he made at a CNN town hall event last month, a federal judge said Tuesday. 

Carroll is seeking at least $10 million in new damages after he repeated statements that, according to her lawyer, a jury had found to be defamatory against her. 

"We look forward to moving ahead expeditiously on E. Jean Carroll's remaining claims," Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement Tuesday. 

Trump disparaged Carroll in the CNN town hall on May 10, one day after a federal jury in New York found him liable for battery and defamation in a civil trial stemming from allegations he raped Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. 

After Trump made the comments, Carroll filed an amended complaint in her first defamation lawsuit against him. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2019 and is still pending. It is separate from the second lawsuit in which a jury awarded her $5 million and concluded that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. 

In the amended complaint, Kaplan argued that Trump, during the town hall, showed he was "undeterred by the jury's verdict" and "persisted in maliciously defaming Carroll yet again." 

"On the very next day, May 10, 2023, Trump lashed out against Carroll during a televised, primetime 'town hall' event hosted by CNN," Kaplan wrote. "He doubled down on his prior defamatory statements, asserting to an audience all too ready to cheer him on that 'I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,' that he did not sexually assault Carroll, and that her account —which had just been validated by a jury of Trump's peers one day before—  was a 'fake,' 'made up story' invented by a 'whack job.'" 

Trump made the comments in response to a question about what he would tell voters who say the verdict should disqualify him from running for president. 

"We maintain that she should not be permitted to retroactively change her legal theory, at the eleventh hour, to avoid the consequences of an adverse finding against her," Trump attorney Alina Habba told CBS News on Tuesday. 

The judge's decision comes the same day that the former president was arraigned in a Miami courtroom on federal charges related to his handling of sensitive documents after he left the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts. 

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Graham Kates

Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at [email protected] or [email protected]