E. Jean Carroll’s Second Suit Against Trump on Track for a Trial

A second defamation suit against President Trump from writer E. Jean Carroll is on track to go to trial in the latest civil setback for the former president. Meanwhile, he is bringing his own countersuit.Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York ruled Thursday that Mr. Trump could not use presidential immunity as a grounds to have Ms. Carroll’s suit against him was dismissed. This ruling means her suit will likely go to trial.Ms. Carroll already won one suit against Mr. Trump, when a jury found he had sexually abused her many years ago in a dressing room of the upscale New York department store Bergdorf Goodman. The jury also found that Mr. Trump had defamed her years later after she sued. He was ordered to pay her $5 million, and was recently forced by the court to put the $5.5 million in escrow until his appeals were heard.While Ms. Carroll’s first defamation case centered on comments Mr. Trump made in October 2022, calling Ms. Carroll’s complaint a “hoax,” the case at hand also focuses on comments Mr. Trump made when he was president, in 2019.At the time, Mr. Trump called Ms. Carroll’s claim a “totally false accusation.” He told the Hill, “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”Mr. Trump’s legal team attempted to get the case the latest case dismissed on the grounds that this was said as part of his duties as president, but Judge Kaplan ruled that the “personal attacks” against Ms. Carroll were separate from “any official responsibility of the president.”This case is also separate from the legal concerns for Mr. Trump relating to his freshest comments about Ms. Carroll, made at a CNN town hall in early May after the jury had found him liable, in which he called her “a wack job.” Ms. Carroll, offended, promptly amended her first suit to include some of Mr. Trump’s new, allegedly defamatory claims following the first verdict.In her first defamation and rape suit, Ms. Carroll was awarded $5 million and she has since amended her case to seek another $10 million on top of the $5 million she had already won. It’s not yet clear how much Ms. Carroll is seeking in her newest suit.Ms. Carroll’s attorney in the case headed for trial, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the Judge Kaplan, hailed the decision as the removal of a roadblock for the civil case.“Trump chose to waive presidential immunity and now he must live with the results of that decision,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Today’s decision removes one more impediment to the January 15 trial on E Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”The decision from the court comes as Mr. Trump filed a countersuit on Tuesday, alleging that Ms. Carroll’s statements on CNN alleging Mr. Trump raped her, which she was not able to prove in court, were defamatory as the jury had only found him liable for sexual assault, not rape.In his countersuit, Mr. Trump seeks unspecified compensation for damages relating to Ms. Carroll’s allegedly damaging remarks. Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba and Michael Madaio, wrote that Ms. Carroll “made these statements knowing each of them were false or with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”“The Interview was on television, social media and multiple internet websites, with the intention of broadcasting and circulating these defamatory statements among a significant portion of the public,” Mr. Trump’s attorney’s wrote.In response to the countersuit, Ms. Kaplan said that Mr. Trump “again argues, contrary to both logic and fact, that he was exonerated by a jury that found that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll by forcibly inserting his fingers into her vagina.”Ms. Kaplan also alleged that four of the five comments Mr. Trump’s suit is concerned with did not occur within the one-year statute of limitations for these cases, adding that she believes Mr. Trump’s suit will be dismissed.“Trump’s filing is thus nothing more than his latest effort to delay accountability for what a jury has already found to be his defamation of E Jean Carroll,” Ms. Kaplan said. “But whether he likes it or not, that accountability is coming very soon.”

E. Jean Carroll’s Second Suit Against Trump on Track for a Trial

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