George Conway: Trump libeled Carroll again on CNBC
Conservative legal commentator George Conway said former President Trump libeled advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a CNBC interview, in which he called her “Miss Bergdorf Goodman” and accused her of making false accusations against him.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, Trump avoided using Carroll’s name directly, referring to her as “Miss Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never – I never met, I have no idea who she is.”
Trump also expressed frustration at the $91.63 million bond he had to post on Friday in Carroll's defamation lawsuit against him, adding, “Except one thing. I got sued. From that point on, I said, Wow, that’s crazy. What this is. I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation.”
In January, a federal jury sitting in New York ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming the advice columnist in 2019 by denying her claims that the former president sexually assaulted her decades earlier.
A separate jury last year ruled Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, leading the former president to cough up $5.5 million in cash. Trump’s reference to “Bergdorf Goodman” is a nod to the department store where Carroll said the sexual assault occurred decades ago.
Conway, in a Monday post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, underscored what he characterized as the significance of Trump’s remarks being made on CNBC, which is anchored in New York.
“The fact that Trump libeled @ejeancarroll on @CNBC @SquawkCNBC is highly significant for a procedural reason in addition to a substantive one,” Conway wrote on X.
“Were E. Jean to sue Trump just for the speech he gave in northwest Georgia the other day, she probably would have had to sue in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia,” he added, referring to similar accusations Trump made this past weekend at a rally in Georgia.
“But now that he libeled her on Squawk Box, which is anchored in Manhattan, she likely may now sue in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York,” Conway said. “If she does that, the case would be assigned to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan as a case related to the earlier two cases that produced $88.3 million in damages awards.”
Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan issued a statement to The New York Times making it clear that they were carefully monitoring Trump’s remarks and had not ruled out pursuing a new defamation suit.
"The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years. As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll,” the statement read.
Trump on Friday posted a bond of $91.63 million in Carroll's defamation lawsuit — 110 percent of the damages, as is standard practice — hours after the judge rejected his latest attempt to delay a deadline he had faced on Monday.