One day after the attorney for E. Jean Carroll amended her first defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump to include remarks he recently made about her at a CNN town hall, a town hall that was held one day after a jury found him liable in the journalist’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit, the ex-president again has gone after Carroll.
A legal expert says Trump’s remarks early Tuesday morning could harm him later today in his criminal case as he appears virtually in a pretrial hearing before a New York judge.
“Just hours after E. Jean Carroll moved to amend her original defamation case against Donald Trump, Trump is back on Truth Social, reiterating the same statements about her he’s been making since 2019,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin observes.
At 7:30 Tuesday morning, Trump again claimed he doesn’t know Carroll, and “never met her or touched her,” he said on his social media site, including alleging she made a racist remark about her then-husband. In addition to other claims, the ex-president, who was ordered by a jury to pay Carroll $5 million, called her allegations “Fake” and “Made Up.” And in all-caps, he called it a “scam” and the trial “unfair.”
“What’s different now, however, is threefold,” Rubin explains. “First, she already has obtained a jury verdict that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s and then defamed her with substantially similar statements last year.”
“Second, she’s now made it crystal clear that she’s not dropping her first-filed — and arguably significantly more remunerative — case, which stems from his June 2019 statements about her and also seeks punitive damages for his post-verdict speech on CNN earlier this month,” she adds.
In Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit, which has yet to go to trial, she is asking $10 million.
“And third,” Rubin continues, “there is not-so-coincidental overlap with Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan. Today, Judge Juan Merchan is expected to look Trump in the eye (albeit by video link) & ensure there is no confusion about Trump’s obligations under the protective order in that case.”
In Trump’s Manhattan criminal case he is being charged with 34 felony counts, related to “orchestrating a hush-money scheme to pave his path to the presidency and then covering it up from the White House,” as The New York Times reported.
“That protective order enumerates what Trump can’t do with discovery obtained from the Manhattan DA’s office. He may not post, distribute, or even disseminate any information derived from that discovery on social media, including, but not limited to, Truth Social.”
Additionally, Trump may only see discovery materials while in the presence of his attorney, and he may not take photos or other recordings of them.
“What does this have to do with Carroll?” Rubin posits. “No judge lives in a vacuum. That Trump is again taunting a private litigant against him on social media — and making reference to discovery and evidentiary disputes in her recent trial — only underscores the need for the protective order.”
“Neither Carroll nor her lawyers scare easily. But the ongoing threat Trump’s social media abuse poses not only to her but to the Manhattan DA team, its witnesses, and investigators cannot be understated,” she explains.
In Carroll’s defamation and sexual abuse case, the judge in a rare move ordered the jury be anonymous, barring even Trump’s attorneys from knowing who they were out of fear they or those close to them might be harmed.
The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery weighs in via Twitter, writing: “Trump keeps defaming E Jean Carroll. This afternoon, a NY state court judge in an unrelated case will warn Trump about his online behavior. He’s giving the judge ample reason to doubt whether he can abide by court orders–and common decency. Quite the fast-moving train wreck.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow a week ago interviewed E. Jean Carroll and her attorney, Robbie Kaplan, and re-ran a portion of that interview Monday evening. Watch below or at this link.