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Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential
nomination, on June 8 asked for a new trial after the jury
awarded Carroll $5 million. Trump said the damages were
excessive because the jury did not find Carroll was raped and
because the alleged conduct did not cause her a diagnosed mental
injury.
In court papers filed Thursday in opposition to Trump's request,
Carroll's lawyers maintained that the attack has harmed her
ability to have romantic and sexual relationships, and that she
has suffered intrusive memories.
They pointed to a psychologist's testimony at trial that Carroll
had some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Trump's motion is nothing more than his latest effort to
obfuscate the import of the jury's verdict by engaging in his
own particular Trump-branded form of magical thinking," her
lawyers wrote.
Trump is also appealing the verdict. Joseph Tacopina, one of his
lawyers, said on Thursday, "We are confident we will win on
appeal."
Carroll's lawsuit, filed in 2022, said Trump raped her in a
dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in
Manhattan in the mid-1990s, and defamed her by denying it
happened. Trump has called Carroll's claims a "hoax."
Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, filed a
separate lawsuit in November 2019 for defamation only.
That case has been bogged down in appeals over whether Trump was
immune from being sued because he was president when he spoke.
Carroll updated that lawsuit to seek $10 million from Trump
after he called her account "fake" and labeled her a "whack job"
in a CNN town hall after the jury's verdict in the 2022 lawsuit.
The case is one of several legal woes facing Trump, the first
current or former U.S. president to face criminal charges, as he
seeks to return to the White House.
Last week, he pleaded not guilty to 37 federal counts of
retaining national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in
Florida and obstructing an investigation into his conduct. In
April, he pleaded not guilty to New York state charges stemming
from a 2016 hush money payment to a porn star.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Angus MacSwan
and Leslie Adler)
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