Former President Donald Trump received another, unrelated legal blow on the same day he was arraigned in Miami on federal criminal charges.
In a decision made Tuesday, a federal judge allowed writer E. Jean Carroll and her legal team to amend her original $10 million defamation lawsuit against Trump. Initially filed in 2019, the civil suit alleges that Trump defamed Carroll when he claimed that she was lying for personal gain when she accused him of raping her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The amended suit will now contain statements Trump made at the poorly-received CNN town hall in May.
Carroll filed a second defamation suit against Trump in 2022, which included an additional claim of sexual battery. In May, a New York jury found the former president civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages for defamation and battery.
Only one day after that verdict, Trump doubled down on his dismissal of Carroll's accusations, continuing to claim that he had never met her and that her story was made up.
"What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes, you're playing hanky-panky in a dressing room, okay?" Trump said. "I swear on my children, which I never do, I have no idea who this woman is. This is a fake story, made up story."
Carroll's legal team moved swiftly after these comments, petitioning Judge Lewis Kaplan to allow them to add them to the 2019 lawsuit.
"We look forward to moving ahead expeditiously on E. Jean Carroll's remaining claims," attorney Roberta Kaplan said about her client's case.
Trump's legal team, meanwhile, opposed the possible amendment of the original suit and has sought to have the early case dismissed altogether. The case is currently tied up on appeal, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) previously finding that Trump had acted within the scope of his job as president when he spoke about Carroll in the 2019 comments at the heart of the original case.
In the wake of the civil suit verdict last month, however, the DOJ has asked for more time in considering the case, which some have interpreted as a sign that it is reexamining its prior decision.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's press team via email for comment.
The news of the amendment came on the same day that Trump was taken into federal custody at a Miami courthouse and arraigned on charges relating to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Trump is charged with, among other things in the case, willfully retaining documents with sensitive U.S. defense information. In court, he and his co-defendant, Waltine Nauta, pleaded not guilty.
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
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