E Jean Carroll says that she may sue Donald Trump again after the former president branded her sexual abuse claim against him “fake” and a “made up story” during a CNN town hall.
Mr Trump’s lashed out at Ms Carroll just one day after a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and ordered him to pay $5m in damages.
Ms Carroll, 79, sued the former president for raping her in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 1996, and then “destroying” her reputation when he claimed she was lying.
The jury didn’t find Mr Trump liable of raping Ms Carroll, but it found the one-time president more likely than not sexually abused Ms Carroll.
During the CNN event on Wednesday evening, Mr Trump described her as a “whack job” and called the trial “rigged”.
“I swear on my children, which I never do, I have no idea who this woman – this is a fake story, a made-up story,” he said.
Ms Carroll told The New York Times that she had slept through the town hall event, but that her lawyer had sent her Mr Trump’s comments on Thursday.
“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” she told the newspaper as she insisted had been “insulted by better people” than the one-term president.
And she added: “I am upset on the behalf of young men in America. They cannot listen to this balderdash and this old-timey view of women, which is a cave-man view.”
Ms Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the newspaper that no decision had yet been made on suing Mr Trump for a third time.
“Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” she said. “We have to weigh the various pros and cons and we’ll come to a decision in the next day or so, probably.”
