Former columnist E. Jean Carroll, to whom former US President Donald Trump was ordered to pay $5 million after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting her, has filed a new defamation lawsuit against him over statements he made after the publication of decision.

“She’s crazy,” the 2024 Republican presidential nominee said on CNN a day after the May 9 unanimous decision by a nine-juror in New York.

During this show, in the presence of an audience who also addressed questions to Trump, the former president repeated that he has “never met” the former Elle magazine columnist and again spoke of “a fabricated story”.

Trump’s statements “after the decision was announced demonstrate the depth of his malice toward Carol,” her lawyers say in the new lawsuit. Carroll is seeking damages “to punish Trump” but also “to prevent him from engaging in other defamatory actions and to prevent other people from doing the same.”

A day before the CNN broadcast, the 45th president of the United States had been found guilty of sexually assaulting the columnist, who accused him of raping her in a fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman store in New York in the spring of 1996.

Jurors also found Trump guilty of defamation for statements he made in 2022 and ordered him to pay a total of $5 million to Carroll. Trump has appealed.