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Then-President Donald Trump “unleashed his followers’’ on E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sex assault — including some who said she should be raped and killed, her lawyer contended Tuesday.

“How much money will it take to make him stop? Because he has not stopped,” Carroll’s lawyer, Shawn Crowley, told a Manhattan federal jury in opening statements at Trump’s second defamation trial involving the plaintiff.

But Trump’s lawyer, in her own openings, claimed Carroll is relishing her new status as an “anti-Trump celebrity” and should not be entitled to any damages stemming from his alleged lies about her.

The former president, 77, was already ordered at a previous trial to pay $5 million to the “Ask E. Jean” advice columnist after the jurors found him liable for sexually abusing her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room in 1996 and then defaming her by writing online in 2022 that her claims were a “complete con job.”

This latest defamation case involves similar comments Trump made against Carroll after she went public about the alleged attack in 2019.

A judge already ruled that Trump defamed Carroll in 2019. The current jury is deciding how much he should pay her for it. Her camp is seeking more than $10 million.

“He was president,” Crowley said of comments Trump made allegedly egging on his loyalists against Carroll. “And when he spoke, the world listened.

“He had the biggest microphone on the planet. And the next week, he used it to tear her reputation to shreds, to defame her,” the lawyer alleged.

Crowley said the real estate tycoon — who is running for president again — did this in a series of “vicious attacks” against Carroll beginning June 22, 2019, when he denied ever meeting the now-80-year-old and verbally assaulted her.


  Donald Trump “unleashed his followers” on E. Jean Carroll for claiming he sexually assaulted her. Gregory P. Mango Donald Trump “unleashed his followers” on E. Jean Carroll for claiming he sexually assaulted her. Gregory P. Mango

“He said he had no idea who she was,” Crowley said. “He accused her of lying and making up a story to make money … and threatened her. He said she should pay dearly for speaking out against him.”

Trump “unleashed his followers to go after her online, to attack her character, to threaten her life,” the lawyer said.

After Trump’s public statements in speeches and online, Carroll received messages calling her “ugly,” saying she should be jailed and raped, and others “threatening that she should die all because she had the courage to speak out about what Donald Trump had done to her,” Crowley said.

This ruined Carroll’s journalistic reputation and caused her to live in fear — even to this day, the lawyer said.


  Trump, while president, denied knowing Carroll and attacked her credibility, Carroll’s lawyer said. REUTERS Trump, while president, denied knowing Carroll and attacked her credibility, Carroll’s lawyer said. REUTERS

“She’s afraid — afraid that someday someone will make good on their threats,” Crowley.

The lawyer said her client is asking for the jury to award her a “very significant” amount of money because of the fallout in Carroll’s life over the past four years.

But Trump lawyer Alina Habba argued that Carroll hasn’t suffered “harm” and that she’s actually prospering after going public about her accusations.

“She doesn’t want to fix her reputation, ladies and gentlemen. She likes her new brand,” Habba said of Carroll.


  Trump was in court in the morning but was not there during opening statements. AP Trump was in court in the morning but was not there during opening statements. AP

Habba said the alleged damage that Carroll suffered consists of “mean tweets from Twitter trolls … and she wants my client to pay for their actions.

“Regardless of a few mean tweets, Ms. Carroll is now more famous than she has ever been in her life,” Habba said

And anyway, Trump “was merely defending himself” when he made the public comments about her, the lawyer said.

Trump was not in court when Crowley delivered the impassioned statements to the nine-person jury — which included a doctor, a publicist and a banker — though the former commander-in-chief was in the Lower Manhattan courtroom during jury selection earlier in the day.

“He sat in this courthouse this morning. And while he was sitting there, he posted more defamatory statements, more lies … 22 posts just today,” Crowley pointed out. “Think about that, think about that when you consider how much money it will take to get him to stop.”

Just before and during Trump’s time sitting in the courtroom in the morning, he posted a series of messages on Truth Social about Carroll — including one saying: “Can you believe I have to defend myself against this woman’s fake story?!”

The trial is expected to last a week, and jurors are slated to hear the infamous recording of Trump bragging to then-“Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush that women let him grope them because he’s a “star.

Habba has told the judge their camp would be calling two witnesses: Trump and Carol Martin — the woman in whom Carroll confided shortly after she was allegedly attacked by Trump.

If the 45th president does take the witness stand, he will be on a short leash about what he is allowed to say and will not be allowed to claim he didn’t know Carroll or that he didn’t sexually assault her, since a jury already found him liable in the prior case, the judge has said.

Carroll is planning to take the stand — as she did in the first trial — on Wednesday. Her team is also set to call a journalism professor and a former editor at the magazine Elle, where Carroll used to work.

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