Belongs in 'The Onion': E. Jean Carroll court filing ridicules Trump's defamation suit counterclaim

Attorneys representing E. Jean Carroll in her defamation case against Donald Trump in court filings on Tuesday slammed the former president’s counterclaim, likening it to parody.

Carroll won a $5 million verdict against Trump in May after a jury found the former president liable for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store, but it did not find Trump liable for raping her, as she had alleged.

Carroll is now seeking an additional $10 million for disparaging comments the former president made against Carroll after the verdict.

But a Trump counterclaim against Carroll alleges the former advice columnist “made these false statements with actual malice and ill will with an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack [Trump’s] reputation, as these false statements were clearly contrary to the jury verdict.”

Carroll’s attorneys on Tuesday assailed the former president’s countersuit in a filing in which they sought its dismissal.

“Trump’s ‘tit for tat’ counterclaim is nothing more than his latest effort to spin his loss at trial,” attorneys representing Carroll said

Trump’s counterclaim centers on the allegation that Carroll defamed Trump and caused “inordinate” harm by suggesting in interviews after the verdict that the former president “not only used his fingers, but also his penis” in the assault.

“While that might read like an article penned by Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker or by a writer at the Onion, it’s actually the theory of the counterclaim that Trump now purports to assert in this action,” Carroll’s attorneys wrote.

“But here in federal court, where logic and reason rather than satire prevail, it is clear that Trump’s new counterclaim for defamation should be dismissed with prejudice.”