ROME, Georgia — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday reiterated his claim that writer E. Jean Carroll had levied “false accusations” against him, even as similar remarks have resulted in large court judgments against him.
Speaking at a Georgia campaign rally that represented Trump’s pivot toward the general election as he seeks to prevent a second loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump reiterated a number of grievances, Carroll’s civil court victories among them.
“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made up story,” he said, referencing the bond he posted this week as he appeals a defamation verdict against him.
“Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her,” he continued.
“She wrote a book, she said things,” Trump told the raucous crowd in Rome, about 70 miles northeast of Atlanta. “And when I denied it, I said, It’s so crazy. It’s false.’ I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.”
At issue for Trump has been Carroll’s allegation that he raped her during an encounter in the dressing room of a New York department store in the 1990s and then defamed her by calling her account a “hoax” and a “con job.”
In May, a jury did not find Trump liable for the alleged rape but awarded Carroll $5 million after finding the former president liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
A separate case focused on similar comments Trump made about Carroll while in office and concluded he defamed her when casting doubt on her story. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said that case would be about determining damages — later adjudged to be $83.3 million — as the abuse was factual.
Trump is appealing both cases.
The judgments did not appear to dissuade him from returning to his denials of her account. On Saturday, Trump said that Carroll “is not a believable person” and that Kaplan — whom he called “a terrible person, a terrible judge” and “highly corrupt” — knows as much.
Trump blamed “Democratic operatives” for his defamation woes, and called the city where he and his father bought, sold, traded and developed real estate projects for the better part of a century a crooked metropolis.
“New York is a very corrupt place,” Trump said.
It did not appear Carroll had responded to Trump’s latest denials of her story as of early Sunday.
