Former President Donald Trump says he plans to sue a woman who accused him of alleged raping her two decades ago.
Trump, who vehemently denies the claim and recently replaced his legal team, asked a federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday for permission to file a counterclaim against New York advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who filed a defamation lawsuit against him, according to Bloomberg. The former president argues Carroll’s lawsuit was filed in bad faith.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, for comment.
The suit revolves around Carroll alleging Trump raped her in the 1990s at a New York department store. Trump denied the story when asked by a reporter in 2019, claiming Carroll was not his type and that she fabricated the story to boost her book sales. Carroll then sued him for defamation.
“I am filing this on behalf of every woman who has ever been harassed, assaulted, silenced, or spoken up only to be shamed, fired, ridiculed, and belittled,” Carroll said at the time, according to the Washington Post. “No person in this country should be above the law — including the president.”
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The Justice Department under both Trump’s and Joe Biden’s administrations has said Trump acted within his role as a government employee when responding to the reporter’s questions. The Justice Department wrote that courts have sided with government officials in the past regarding press statements about matters of public interest or the official’s private life.
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, abruptly ended her nearly five-year-old defamation lawsuit against Trump earlier this month after the former president’s attorney similarly said there was a plan to file a counterclaim.
