Donald Trump Again Claims E. Jean Carroll Made “False Accusations”

Test Ticker

THE FIRST $500,000

This is a big one: the first time we’re asking for the donations Mother Jones relies on since joining forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting. So in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” we lay it all out for you—why we merged, how we’re stronger together, and why we’re more optimistic than normal about the work ahead. It still won’t be easy. Please help us raise the First $500,000 we need by June 22.

This is big. Mother Jones just merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting, and this is the first time we’re asking for the donations we rely on. So we lay it all out for you in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” and we need to raise the First $500,000 in online donations by June 22. It won’t be easy. Please help if you can.

A diptych of photos of Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll. On the right, Donald Trump, cropped tightly, in dark gray monotone, yells into a microphone at a campaign rally. On the left, E. Jean Carroll, in color against a bright red background, holds an umbrella, evocative of using it as a shield against Trump's slanders.

Mother Jones illustration; Edna Leshowitz/ZUMA; Erik S. Lesser/EFE/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Whenever Donald Trump speaks, somewhere out there a young lawyer makes partner.

During a campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, last night, the former president once again claimed that E. Jean Carroll had falsely accused him of raping her.

Trump describes E Jean Carroll's claims against him as "false accusations" even after a jury found him liable for sexual assault pic.twitter.com/sChFXKLPYY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 10, 2024

Trump’s comments came days after he had secured a $91.6 million bond to cover the whopping judgement ($83 million plus interest) in Carroll’s recent defamation case while he appeals the decision. A jury previously awarded Carroll $5 million in a 2022 case that found Trump liable for sexually abusing her in the ’90s and later defaming her by claiming she had concocted her allegations.

“Can you believe this,” he said on Saturday. “Sometimes it’s not good to be rich. I just posted a 91 million dollar bond, 91 million, on a fake story, totally made up story. Think of it… Based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of.”

His tirade raised the immediate question of whether Trump—who faces 91 criminal counts, a fraud penalty that will top $450 million, and an array of other legal entanglements—had once again exposed himself to legal jeopardy by making comments similar to those that courts have twice found defamatory.

Last month, one of Carroll’s attorneys raised the possibility of a third suit against Trump after he lashed out about the most recent defamation verdict against him during a rally in Michigan. “We’re watching, we’re listening,” Carroll’s lawyer, Shawn Crowley, told MSNBC. “We had really hoped that, as I think the jury found, that $83 million would maybe be enough to convince him to keep E. Jean Carroll’s name out of his mouth. Apparently, he showed us this weekend that he really cannot control himself and that maybe it wasn’t.”

The recent civil judgements against Trump, coupled with other factors, are increasingly placing major financial pressures on his business empire. Yet Trump, as his comments Saturday indicate, doesn’t seem overly concerned by another legal bill.

His rally in Georgia marked the first time Trump had returned to the state since last August, when he surrendered himself in Fulton County on felony charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.