Team Trump argues that verbal abuse gave E. Jean Carroll free publicity

After being ordered to pay $5 million in E. Jean Carroll's first civil defamation trial against him, Donald Trump is facing the possibility of having to pay the former Elle columnist even more damages in a second defamation case. One of the bizarre defenses that Trump's legal team is using is that Carroll has benefitted from the former president's verbal attacks against her.

Carroll alleges that Trump tried to rape her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996, and Trump has responded by repeatedly insulting her — resulting in two separate defamation lawsuits.

The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reports that that the trial in the second case "once again veered toward parody" on Thursday, January 18, when Trump lawyer Alina Habba "suggested that" Carroll "just be better off now that she's more famous" after being "relentlessly trashed" by Trump.

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Questioning Carroll in the courtroom, Habba asked, "Your reputation, in many ways, is better today, Ms. Carroll?” And the journalist, now 80, responded, "No. My status was lowered. I'm partaking in this trial to bring my own reputation and status back."

Pagliery, in an article published on January 19, stresses that Carroll has been verbally abused not only by Trump, but also, by his supporters.

"Faced with the reality that Trump's loyalist mob immediately lashed out against Carroll for coming forward about the rape accusation," the Daily Beast reporter explains, "defense attorneys also tried to decouple the former president's words about Carroll from his MAGA brigade's attacks — arguing that the advice columnist should've seen it coming. Curiously, though, Trump's lawyers didn't even push back on the $12 million price tag that a marketing expert said it would cost to repair Carroll's reputation."

Pagliery continues, "In the intervening years, she has been subjected to years of insults from online trolls who have tossed insults ranging from politically motivated liar to 'whore.' At a previous iteration of this trial, a separate New York jury concluded that the real estate tycoon did, in fact, force himself on Carroll in the mid-1990s. They decided Trump owed Carroll $5 million for those actions and his denials. This time around, nine other New Yorkers at this damages-only trial are determining whether Trump should pay even more for the widely broadcasted denials he made from the White House in 2019. The jury has been instructed to assume Trump did sexually assault Carroll, as that previous jury determined."

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Habba, on January 18, noted that Carroll made $70,000 in 2023, implying that free publicity from Trump benefitted her financially and increased her presence on social media. But Pagliery points out that $70K "is a far cry from the $400,000 salary she once made as a celebrated magazine columnist in Manhattan decades ago."

Carroll told Habba, "Yes, I'm more well-known. And I'm hated by a lot more people."

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Read Jose Pagliery's full report for the Daily Beast at this link (subscription required).