Trump loses rape case as court fails to rule. In Washington, D.C., writer E. Jean Carroll filed the first of two legal defamation cases against Donald Trump for allegedly raping her 30 years earlier.
After Trump accused the former Elle magazine journalist of lying about the alleged meeting in June 2019, the district’s highest local court, the Court of Appeals, concluded it didn’t have enough evidence to grant him immunity.
A decision that Trump was acting as president, not personally, would have shielded him and doomed Carroll’s initial complaint since the government could replace itself as the defendant and cannot be sued for defamation.
The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had requested local law advice from the Washington court last September, received the case.
Carroll’s lawyers were silent.
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, wrote in an email, “We are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump’s favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll’s case.”
Thursday’s judgment is unaffected by Carroll’s second lawsuit’s April 25 Manhattan federal court trial.
That complaint includes a battery claim under a New York law that permits sexual assault survivors to sue their alleged abusers even after expired statutes of limitations.
Trump wants to postpone the trial until May 23, stating “prejudicial media coverage” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s recent criminal prosecution against him will keep the case “top of mind” for most prospective jurors.
After Carroll’s attorneys informed them that Reid Hoffman, the wealthy LinkedIn co-founder, and major Democratic supporter, was paying part of her legal fees, his lawyers requested a postponement.
They questioned if Carroll sued Republican Trump for political reasons.
Late Thursday, Manhattan U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan declined to delay the trial but said Trump might obtain additional information regarding Hoffman’s participation and Carroll’s comprehension.
The judge did not consider whether Bragg’s case compromised Trump’s Carroll case fair trial.
Carroll, 79, has accused Trump of delaying her lawsuit.
Carroll’s complaints allege a late 1995 or 1996 interaction with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan.
Trump “maneuvered” Carroll into a dressing room and sexually attacked her after she helped him buy a present for another lady.
After Carroll revealed the event in a June 2019 New York magazine excerpt from her novel, Trump told a White House reporter that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she manufactured the rape accusation to sell her book.
He reaffirmed his denial on Truth Social in October 2022, calling the rape accusation a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job,” and “complete scam.”
The Washington appeals court said the district normally considers whether persons behave to the extent of their job by whether they were motivated to help their employer at the time.
Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby stated identifying Trump’s initial thoughts on Carroll was a “fact-intensive question” that “cannot be resolved as a matter of law in either party’s favor on the record before us.”
At trial, Carroll will likely present two women who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted them and a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump making obscene statements about women that jeopardized his 2016 White House quest.
Trump pled not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business documents in Bragg’s indictment linked to Stormy Daniels’s hush money payment on April 4.
Trump et al. v. Carroll, DCCA No. 22-SP-0745.
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