WASHINGTON – Columnist E. Jean Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit in New York on Monday against President Donald Trump, who she said raped her in a department store dressing room more than 20 years ago.
Carroll, 75, first went public with the allegation against Trump in June, before the release of her book "What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal," which contains a description of the alleged assault.
Trump denied the allegation and accused Carroll of inventing it to boost book sales. He denied having ever met her – although a photo surfaced of them speaking at a party in the 1980s. "She's not my type," Trump said.
"She is trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section," Trump said in a statement.
"Let me get this straight – Ms. Carroll is suing the president for defending himself against false allegations?" White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said Monday. "I guess since the book did not make any money she's trying to get paid another way. The story she used to try and sell her trash book never happened, period."
Grisham claimed that an assault as described by Carroll could never have taken place in "a dressing room of a crowded department store."
"The lawsuit is frivolous, and the story is a fraud – just like the author," Grisham said.
What we know:Writer E. Jean Carroll's claim of sexual assault against Trump
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"After he lied about attacking her, he surrounded that central lie with a swarm of related lies in an effort to explain why she would invent an accusation of rape. To do so, he smeared her integrity, honesty, and dignity – all in the national press," the lawsuit says.
"Two decades ago, Donald Trump forced E. Jean Carroll up against a dressing room wall at Bergdorf Goodman and raped her," Carroll's attorney, Robbie Kaplan, said in a statement. "In her advice column, Carroll encourages her readers to be brave, to think clearly, and to seek justice. So Carroll has decided to follow her own advice. We are so honored to be representing someone as brave as E. Jean Carroll.”
Carroll is one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, though she is the first to accuse him of rape. The lawsuit claims that his response to her allegation was "consistent with his tried-and-true playbook for responding to credible reports that he sexually assaulted women."
Trump faces a similar defamation lawsuit brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on his reality TV show "The Apprentice." Zervos alleges Trump groped and forcibly kissed her at a California hotel in 2007. A telephone conference in that case is scheduled for Nov. 7.
In December, a defamation suit brought against Trump by porn star Stephanie Clifford – also known as Stormy Daniels – failed, and a federal judge ordered Clifford to pay Trump's attorney's nearly $300,000.
“I am filing this lawsuit for every woman who’s been pinched, prodded, cornered, felt-up, pushed against a wall, grabbed, groped, assaulted, and has spoken up only to be shamed, demeaned, disgraced, passed over for promotion, fired, and forgotten," Carroll said in a statement. "While I can no longer hold Donald Trump accountable for assaulting me more than twenty years ago, I can hold him accountable for lying about it and I fully intend to do so."
Contributing: David Jackson and Kevin McCoy
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