Donald Trump delivered stinging criticisms against writer E Jean Carroll moments after his lawyers attempted to overturn a $5m ruling that he defamed and sexually assaulted her.
“I’ve never met this woman,” Trump said in New York on Friday. “It’s a made up fabricated story by someone looking to promote a book.”
In May 2023, a jury found Trump was liable for sexual assault and handed him a lofty $5m (£3.8m) fine.
Trump sat in court as his lawyers on Friday tried to reverse that decision, one of two in which he was accused by Ms Carroll of sexual assault and defamation.
He was found liable unanimously by a jury in both cases, with the second case resulting in an additional $83m judgement against him.
His denial of the accusations and knowing Ms Carroll on Friday resemble claims Trump has made before, which led to the second trial.
“She has gone around for years saying this story and it’s a total lie,” Trump said.
“This whole thing started, along with just about every case I’ve been involved with, with the political campaign of Harris, who’s having a bad time,” he said.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, was quoted by The New York Times as saying “all options are on the table” on whether she would file a new defamation claim.
The hearing in front of a federal appeals court on Friday resurfaced damaging allegations against Trump as he nears the final stretch of his US presidential campaign.
The former president denied that he had ever met Ms Carroll and repeated several claims that had put him in legal jeopardy during a press conference in the glitzy gold and marble lobby of Trump Tower in New York.
“It’s an appeal of a ridiculous verdict of a woman I’ve never met,” he said.
On Friday, Trump’s lawyers sought to appeal the judgement in the first case, arguing before the court that the allegations were “implausible” and that the evidence was “inflammatory” and “inadmissible”.
John Sauer, who is representing Trump, said that Ms Carroll’s team had presented no physical evidence or eye witnesses to support her accusations. He called the trial a “quintessential ‘he said she said’ case”.
Mr Sauer also sought to disqualify the testimony of two witnesses who claimed they were similarly assaulted by Trump.
Ms Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, opened her argument by drawing attention back to the heart of the case.
“Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996 in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” she said.
Ms Kaplan also defended the testimony of the two witnesses and said they were key to establishing a pattern of behaviour that supported Ms Carroll’s allegations.
Trump blamed his lawyers for the jury’s verdict in this case, as they had advised him to avoid appearing in court. He has regularly attended court cases involving him since.
He attended and briefly testified at the second trial.
The hearing is just one of multiple legal hurdles that Trump faces, and he complained about several of them during his press conference on Friday.
He awaits sentencing in a Manhattan criminal trial after he was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to an adult film star.
The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, is expected to make his decision on Friday whether to delay the sentencing until after the election.