In her first televised interview since winning her lawsuit against Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll and her attorney, Robbie Kaplan, appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” to talk about that case. But of course Maddow brought up a related matter: CNN’s ill-advised, poorly received Trump town hall.
At one point, Maddow asked Kaplan and Carroll a question that critics of the town hall have asked since it aired — could the disparaging comments Trump made about Carroll during the event get him sued again? According to Kaplan, “definitely.”
You’ll recall that during the town hall, Trump repeatedly defamed Carroll. And of course, he did so literally one day after the jury in Carroll’s lawsuit found him liable for sexual assault and defamation.
During the interview, Maddow got to this topic first by listing things Trump said about Carroll that made him liable in her lawsuit. “Then he did it again,” she continued. “The defamation. The calling you a liar. The exact same things the jury held him liable for the day before, he did again the next day on national television. Is that just the way it has to be? Do you think that potentially could be actionable, if you were to file another suit? Would it work the same way?”
“So it’s definitely actionable,” Kaplan replied. “And here the cruelty will make him less wealthy. He is not going to get away with it another time. It’s unprecedented for a person to have been held liable in defamation to keep doing the defamation, so there are not a lot of cases that we can look to for a playbook about how to do it.”
“But, suffice to say, I have a lot of lawyers who are very busy looking into this, and we are weighing all of our options,” Kaplan added. Watch that clip above now.
Later in the episode, Maddow also brought up the other defamation case Kaplan and Carroll are pursuing against Trump. Kaplan said they would be making an announcement “very, very soon”, and when pressed said, “two to three days, max.” So, stay tuned.
