Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump reacts to supporters as he arrives on stage during a Get Out the Vote Rally March 2, 2024 in Richmond, Virginia.
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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday stood by his 2019 statement that writer E. Jean Carroll made a “totally false accusation” against him, despite similar claims resulting in him losing a defamation case in January.
Campaigning at a rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump referenced the $91.6 million bond he posted on March 8, three days before his deadline to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her in statements he made as president after denying her accusation that he’d raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Carroll first came forward in 2019 with sexual assault claims against Trump before another civil trial in May 2023, where a New York jury found that the former president sexually abused Carroll but didn’t rape her.
“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,” Trump said, adding that the judgment was, “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.”
The 77-year-old made similar remarks in a June 22, 2019, statement, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin posted on X on Saturday, including a document of Trump’s denial of knowing “who this woman is.”
“She wrote a book, she said things, and when I denied it, I said, ‘It’s so crazy, it’s false,’ I get sued for defamation,” Trump said on Saturday before referring to New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which lifted the state’s statute of limitations for one year, allowing survivors of sexual assault to sue no matter how long ago the alleged abuse happened.
“They changed the law that allowed women to go back, like unlimited … then she went back and she said, mid-90s maybe, I have no idea,” he said.
On top of the $83.3 million in damages is a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict that Carroll won against Trump last year. In February, the former president was also ordered to pay $464 million in damages for a separate fraud case against Trump and top executives at his company — he plans to appeal all three verdicts.
Trump also shared his concerns about Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge who denied his request to delay the defamation judgment, calling him a “Trump-deranged, angry man.”
Both Carroll’s legal team and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.