Barely hours before he would be sitting in a Manhattan courtroom for the start of the penalty phase of his E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, and possibly come face-to-face with his victim and accuser, Donald Trump appeared to once again defame the veteran journalist.
“Trump arrived in the courtroom at 9:40 a.m. ET, and took his seat at the defense table,” NBC News reports. “Carroll was seated two rows in front of him and did not turn around. It’s believed to be the first time the two have been in the same room in almost 30 years.”
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday morning reported, “I am waiting to get into the courtroom for the Carroll proceedings, but the bizarre advantage of still being outside is learning Trump has yet again defamed Carroll on Truth Social.”
A jury in a separate civil case has already found Trump guilty of defaming Carroll in 2022 and ordered him to pay her $5 million.
In this case, Carroll accused Trump of defaming her in 2019. She is asking for $10 million.
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Both cases involve Carroll’s allegation that Trump raped her and defamed her. The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and later the judge said in common parlance Trump had committed rape.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan last year “clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood,” The Washington Post had reported.
Rubin did not specify which post she considered to be defamatory, but Trump Tuesday morning wrote in one Truth Social post, “Can you believe I have to defend myself against this woman’s fake story?!” That post includes video of E. Jean Carroll. He later re-upped that same post.
He also wrote several posts lashing out at Judge Kaplan and at Carroll. In one he called Carroll’s lawsuit “attempted extortion,” with “extortion” being in all-caps. In another, he claimed he “was wrongfully accused by a woman he never met, saw, or touched (a photo line does not count!), and knows absolutely nothing about.”
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“Remember, those gossip columnists were, perhaps, even more vicious and obsessed than the Internet of today,” Trump added.
Also on Tuesday morning the ex-president posted over a dozen screenshots that appear to be from Carroll’s social media accounts talking about sex. For more than a quarter-century, Carroll wrote an advice column. The New York Times in 1997 wrote about several advice columns, including Carroll’s:
“For today’s columnists, the universe of permissible questions has expanded to include inquiries on everything from esoteric sexual techniques to the nature of the cosmos. Anything goes.”
In total, on Tuesday Trump posted more than 30 times about Carroll on Truth Social.