Donald Trump on Thursday asked for a new trial in a civil case brought by writer E Jean Carroll, in which a jury last month found the former US president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5m in damages.
In a filing in Manhattan federal court, Trump’s lawyers said the jury’s $2m award for the sexual abuse portion of the verdict was “excessive” because the jury had found that Carroll was not raped, and that the conduct Carroll alleged did not cause any diagnosed mental injury.
They also said the $2.7m award for the defamation claim was “based upon pure speculation”.
A lawyer for Carroll had no immediate comment.
Carroll’s lawsuit, filed in 2022, said Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s, and defamed her by denying it happened.
The legal tussles between Trump and Carroll have grown complex.
On 9 May, a jury found Trump had sexually abused Carroll. But just a day after the decision, Trump made disparaging remarks about her during a televised CNN town hall.
Those comments eventually prompted Carroll to go back to court to demand “very substantial” additional damages from Trump. An amended lawsuit seeking an additional $10m in compensatory damages – and more in punitive damages – was then filed in Manhattan by lawyers for Carroll.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the New York Times that Trump’s CNN remarks had made a “a mockery of the jury verdict and our justice system” if he was allowed to repeat such defamatory statements.
Reuters contributed to this report
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