Trump’s lawyers say defamation claim by NY writer must fail because jury agreed he never raped her

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers say a New York writer who won a $5 million jury verdict against the ex-president can’t win a pending defamation lawsuit because the jury agreed with Trump that he never raped her. The lawyers in a Manhattan federal court filing late Monday urged Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to reject columnist E. Jean Carroll’s bid to win at least $10 million more by amending a 4-year-old lawsuit against Trump. They wrote that the jury’s failure to find that Trump raped Carroll in 1996 in a luxury Manhattan department store supports Trump’s claim that he never raped her. The jury found he sexually abused her.