A New York judge has ruled in favor of E. Jean Carroll, allowing her to amend her defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump to seek further damages. Trump was originally found liable for statements he made regarding an alleged sexual assault of Carroll.

According to The Washington Examiner, she will now be allowed to seek a much larger sum from the former president, citing comments he made during a CNN town hall shortly after the initial verdict.

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday allowed E. Jean Carroll to amend her initial defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, permitting her to seek additional damages.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist, had asked a judge to amend her initial November 2019 lawsuit so she could seek additional punitive damages after Trump repeated comments about her during a May 11 town hall, comments similar to ones that a federal jury found to be defamatory.

She is requesting an award of at least $10 million after the jury last month assessed Trump $5 million in civil damages for sexual abuse and defamation.

For context, here’s what Trump had to say during his town hall appearance on CNN that led to this decision.

Trump was quick to jump on this aspect of the jury’s verdict at a CNN town hall hosted in New Hampshire the day after the jury came to its decision, saying “They said, ‘He didn’t rape her.’ And I didn’t do anything else either.”

“I have no idea who this woman – this is a fake story, made up story,” Trump said, calling Carroll a “whack job” and going on a tangent about her ex-husband and pet cat.

Carroll will now seek to double her payout, and given the way the trial went, the jury is likely to oblige her. That could cost Trump a cool $10 million. Carroll’s lawyers are obviously rejoicing at that development.

What can you even say to this? I never thought Carroll was credible, but once a verdict is rendered, it has to be respected. There was no reason to keep talking about the case publicly, especially since it had no political bearing on anything. Trump deciding to go on CNN to repeat the very comments a jury had just found defamatory was a completely self-inflicted wound.

It’s akin to his deposition in the case, which was also a comedy of self-inflicted errors whereby he made it nearly impossible for the jury to not find in favor of Carroll. Otherwise, her case was incredibly weak.

And look, I know the response from some will be that this doesn’t matter. He’s a billionaire and will pay the money regardless. But it’s indicative of a bigger problem, which is that you can’t defeat the deep state and bring about substantive governmental reform (you know, the things conservatives claim to care about) unless you show a basic level of discipline and competency. Without those things, you just get chaos and make CNN lots of money.

The problems we face (and that we write about and interact with here at RedState every day) are serious. If a second Trump term is to succeed, assuming he wins, he can’t continue to operate this way. It’ll be really entertaining, but it’ll also be really ineffective. And at this point, I value the latter much more than the former given the degradation of the last several years.