On Thursday (June 29), a federal judge denied former President Donald Trump’s request that the defamation Lawsuit brought by author E. Jean Carroll be tossed out.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump’s attempt to have the case thrown out in addition to the former President’s attempt to argue absolute Presidential immunity.
In a statement about Judge Kaplan’s decision, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation), wrote that the “summary judgment confirms that once again, Donald Trump’s supposed defenses to E Jean Carroll’s defamation claims don’t work.”
Kaplan explained that “Trump chose to waive presidential immunity,” which meant he would have to “live with the results of that decision,” adding that Thursday’s decision removed “one more impediment” in the defamation trial scheduled for next year.
The trial scheduled for January is not related to the previous defamation and sexual assault lawsuit from Carroll. In the last trial, Trump was found responsible for sexual battery and defamation and was ordered to pay the author $5 million.
Instead, January 2024’s defamation trial stems from Trump’s comments in June 2019.
In 2019, Carroll came forward detailing her accusations that Trump had raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990.
One of the alleged defamatory statements Trump made came from an interview that The Hill conducted with the then-President.
In The Hill interview, Trump claimed Carroll wasn’t his “type” and then declared that “[the sexual assault] never happened.”
One day after last month’s Jury verdict, Trump repeated his denials, saying during a CNN town hall that he didn’t know “who this woman is.”
“I have no idea who the hell she is. She’s a whack job,” Trump added.
Trump’s town hall comments were later added to Carroll’s complaint.
