Bill Cosby Countersues Seven of His Rape Accusers for Defamation

Bill Cosby’s attorney announced Monday morning that he is countersuing seven women accusing him of rape. Cosby is accusing the women of making “malicious, opportunistic and false and defamatory accusations of sexual misconduct against him.” Around 55 women have said the comedian raped or sexually assaulted them.

Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz filed a defamation suit against Cosby in December 2014. They were joined by four more women—Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie—in November. The suit accuses Cosby of falsely claiming they were lying about their sexual abuse claims.

At first, Cosby’s attorneys tried to argue that the suit was unconstitutional and a violation of his First Amendment rights. And now, having evidently dropped that, Cosby’s countersuing them on the same defamation claims they brought against him. His attorney Monique Pressley told USA Today the women are lying for financial gain, specifically to ruin his deals with NBC and Netflix:

“Mr. Cosby states plainly that he neither drugged nor sexually assaulted the defendants and that each defendant has maliciously and knowingly published multiple false statements and accusations from Fall 2014 through the current day in an effort to cause damage to Mr. Cosby’s reputation and to extract financial gains.”

This new statement comes despite the fact that Cosby previously admitted under oath to drugging women he wanted to sleep with.

In other Cosby news, Boston University is the latest school to announce they are revoking an honorary degree presented Cosby. BU’s president wrote in a campus-wide email Monday that Cosby’s alleged assaults on a double-digit number of women brought “significant and lasting discredit upon himself and is inconsistent with the University’s mission and values.”

At least nine schools have recently announced their decisions to revoke Cosby’s meaningless fake degrees: Brown, Spelman, Lehigh, Marquette, Fordham, Tufts, Goucher College, Amherst College, and Springfield College. Around 35 schools have yet to revoke the degrees they bestowed on Cosby. That’s still less than the total number of women who have accused him of rape or assault, which, again, is at least 55.

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