Former ELLE columnist who accused Donald Trump of rape in 2019 plans to file new civil lawsuit

E Jean Carroll plans to claim battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress in civil court

A former ELLE columnist who previously raised rape allegations against Donald Trump will file a new lawsuit.

E Jean Carroll, 78, plans to claim battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, Reuters first reported. The allegations will be raised in civil court under New York state’s new Adult Survivors Act, which gives sexual assault victims a year to file civil charges, regardless of how much time has passed since the alleged attack.

According to court documents reviewed by The Independent, Ms Carroll plans to proceed with the lawsuit on 24 November, when the law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul takes effect. The case and Ms Carroll’s ongoing defamation suit against the former president could be tried in court together in February 2023, according to Reuters.

In 2019, Ms Carroll claimed in her then-forthcoming memoir that Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. Ms Carroll then sued Trump for defamation over statements he made in response to the allegations.

Mr Trump has denied ever assaulting Ms Carroll, who penned the Ask E Jean column from 1993 until she was fired in 2019. Responding to Ms Carroll’s notice to the court about the measure she plans to take — which was made public on Tuesday — Mr Trump’s attorney branded the efforts “extraordinarily prejudicial” for his client.

”To permit Plaintiff to drastically alter the scope and subject matter of this case at such time would severely prejudice Defendant’s rights,” Trump attorney Alina Habba wrote in the filing to Judge Lewis Kaplan.

Ms Carroll’s defamation suit is among a plethora of pending legal woes for the former president, who is facing a separate probe from his role in the Capital riot, a civil litigation regarding his businesses in New York, and an FBI investigation that led to a raid at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

E Jean Carroll defamation suit is among a slew of pending legal woes for the former president (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The former columnist first aired her allegations against Mr Trump in her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal. The excerpt was published by New York magazine in June 2019 before the book hit the bookshelves in July of that year.

Mr Trump first denied the allegation at a White House press conference, where he said he had never met Ms Carroll and accused her of lying to try to sell her memoir.

Ms Carroll’s suit alleges that statements made by Mr Trump in response to the allegations caused her “to suffer reputational, emotional, and professional harm”.