Accused Trump of rape, now suing him for defamation
NEW YORK: An advice columnist who accused Donald Trump of raping her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s has sued him, saying he defamed her by calling her a liar whom he had never met.
E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, filed in New York, says the United States president ‘‘smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity — all in the national press’’ when he responded to her allegations, first broached in a New York magazine article in June.
‘‘Nobody is entitled to conceal acts of sexual assault behind a wall of defamatory falsehoods and deflections,’’ Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in the suit.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, is among more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct or sexual assault, predating his presidency.
Carroll said she bumped into Trump in the Bergdorf Goodman store in 1995 or 1996, and he asked her to help him pick a gift for ‘‘a girl’’ and eventually suggested lingerie.
He suggested Carroll try on a bodysuit, and after a joking exchange, they went into a dressing room. She said he then raped her, but she eventually broke free and fled. — AP