Trump Rape Accuser to Sue Him for Battery Under NY Survivors Law, Judge Told

Erik Larson
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(Bloomberg) -- The New York author who claims Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s filed a public copy of the battery lawsuit she has said she’ll bring against him next week, adding a new legal threat to the former president days after he announced a third run for the White House.

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E. Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist with Elle magazine, will file the lawsuit on Nov. 24 and seek to combine it with her current defamation suit for a proposed joint trial as soon as April, her lawyer said in a filing Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.

The battery suit will be filed on the day New York’s Adult Survivors Act takes effect to lift the statute of limitations for one year on civil claims for sexual offenses, according to the filing. That’ll tee up Carroll’s claim as one of the first tests of the law, which was passed by New York lawmakers in the wake of the “Me Too” movement.

The alleged assault on Carroll caused “significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological harms, loss of dignity, and invasion of her privacy,” her lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in the planned complaint, which has been threatened for several months but had not yet been made public.

Trump has vigorously denied attacking Carroll or touching her in any way.

Merged Cases?

In an exchange of letters filed with the court Thursday, Trump’s lawyers balked at joining the two cases and proposed moving the defamation trial, currently set for February, to May. Carroll, who said she had included the new complaint as a preview for the judge as part of her request, proposed holding a second damages trial if she wins.

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said the early publication of the battery complaint was “typical gamesmanship” by Carroll’s legal team.

“This filing is completely inappropriate and we will take up this issue with the court,” Habba said in a statement.

Carroll made her rape claim in a 2019 New York magazine article that detailed how Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her after they ran into each other while shopping in Manhattan. She then sued Trump for defamation when he publicly accused her of fabricating the attack to sell a “crummy book” she’d written and otherwise maligned her character, according to Carroll.

Alleged Attack

The battery complaint revisits details from the alleged attack, which Carroll says unfolded after she and Trump joked about one of them trying on a bodysuit while they were browsing an empty lingerie sales area.

“Roughly 27 years ago, playful banter at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in New York City took a dark turn when Defendant Donald J. Trump seized Plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, forced her up against a dressing room wall, pinned her in place with his shoulder, and raped her,” according to the new complaint.

A trial as soon as April for the battery claim may be possible because it involves much of the same evidence as the defamation suit, which hinged in part on whether Carroll could prove that her allegations were likely true.

Carroll’s lawyers have already deposed Trump and several other witnesses in the defamation case whose testimony would be relevant to the battery claim, including a writer who claims Trump sexually assaulted her during an interview and a former saleswoman who says he groped her on an airplane. Both women were questioned as part of Carroll’s effort to show a well-established pattern of behavior.

New Defamation Claim

Trump delayed the defamation suit with numerous appeals and other legal maneuvers before being forced to sit for sworn testimony last month at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump’s lawyer said he answered all questions and had been “ready and eager” to testify. Carroll was also deposed by Trump’s lawyers.

Read More: Trump Gives Answers in Rape Accuser’s Defamation Suit Deposition

Notably, the new battery lawsuit will include a fresh defamation claim based on comments Trump made about Carroll on social media in October. The new comments are largely the same as the ones Trump made in 2019, but Trump can’t defend them in the same way because he made them after leaving office.

“And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will,” Trump said in an Oct. 12 post on his Truth Social platform. “This woman is not my type! She has no idea what day, what week, what month, what year or what year this so-called ‘event’ supposedly took place.”

“E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth,” he added.

Impact on Trump’s Defense

In the new complaint, Carroll will say the Oct. 12 statement by Trump “was consistent with other statements that Trump had made in response to other accusations of sexual assault by other women.”

The post may undermine Trump’s current defense of the defamation claim -- that he is protected by a federal law that bars civil claims against employees of the federal government over allegations related to their job duties. That argument is already the subject of a drawn-out appeal that hasn’t yet been resolved.

The federal appeals court in September agreed with Trump that he qualified as a government employee under the federal law, known as the Westfall Act, when he made the disputed comments. But a DC appellate court must still decide whether those comments qualified as an official duty. Arguments on that question are set for Jan. 10 in Washington.

The case is Carroll v. Trump, 20-cv-07311, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Adds Carroll on separate damages trial and Trump on merging suits in second section.)

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