Left: E. Jean Carroll arrives at Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, May 9, 2023, in New York. (AP, John Minchillo)/ Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks during the 56th annual Silver Elephant Gala in Columbia, S.C., Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. (AP /Artie Walker Jr.)
Former President Donald Trump racked up two losses in as many days amid a flurry of 11th-hour pretrial motions filed in author E. Jean Carroll’s long-running defamation lawsuit against him.
Trial looms over Trump’s strongly-worded denials of Carroll’s 2019 claim that he raped her in the dressing room of New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman sometime in the late 1990s. In response to those allegations, Trump told The Hill his accuser was “totally lying” and that “she’s not my type.” A lawsuit ensued.
The 45th president’s recent filings intended to both hamstring the plaintiff’s case and further delay the proceedings.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, in a terse, two-page order, ruled against Trump’s effort to exclude his testimony from a deposition from being used in the upcoming trial.
“The Court overrules Mr. Trump’s broad objection under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 32 to the use of any portion of his deposition transcript,” Kaplan wrote. “His contention that its use would be improper because he is listed as a possible witness is utterly frivolous.”
Under the relevant Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, an adverse party’s deposition can be used for “any purpose,” the judge noted.
“Thus, Ms. Carroll will be permitted to play her otherwise admissible deposition designations at trial even were Mr. Trump to testify,” the order continues.
Carroll also scored another victory against Trump on Thursday in the opposite direction: succeeding on a motion to limit some of the former president’s proposed evidence. Kaplan noted that Trump’s “attempts to include as counter-designations testimony that already was rejected on this basis” in an earlier Carroll case.
In May 2023, a civil jury in New York found that Trump sexually abused Carroll and later defamed her in 2022 when denying the allegation once again, ordering him to pay his victim $5 million.
The current controversy at the federal lawsuit is strictly determining damages. In August 2023, Kaplan found Carroll’s allegations against Trump substantially true. In September 2023, Carroll won a partial motion for summary judgment — limiting the extant dispute to the question of damages alone.
Trial on the amount of money the ex-president owes his rape victim is currently slated to begin on Jan. 16.
In December 2023, Trump lost an argument about presidential immunity before a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kaplan had previously ruled immunity had been waived because it was simply claimed far too late in the case.
“Is presidential immunity waivable? And if so, did defendant waive it? The answer to both questions is yes,” the appellate judges concluded.
After that, Trump filed a motion asking the full appeals court to take up the case — instead of just the earlier three-judge panel.
On Wednesday, without a word, as is customary, the court declined to take up the case. Trump could, in a final effort to push the upcoming damages trial back, now appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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