An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump can't claim presidential immunity from a defamation lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan maintained a federal judge's rejection of Trump's assertion of immunity on the grounds that Trump had waited too long to raise it as a defense. "A three-year-delay is more than enough, under our precedents, to qualify as 'undue,'" the three-judge panel, who heard Trump's appeal on an expedited basis ahead of a scheduled January trial, wrote in its opinion, per Reuters.
Carroll sued Trump in November 2019 and seeks at least $10 million in damages over comments he made while in office that June after she first publicly accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s. Trump denied knowing Carroll, said she was not his "type," and alleged she fabricated the rape claim to promote her memoir. He didn't claim absolute presidential immunity protected him from the suit until December 2022. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan previously rejected Trump's effort to have Carroll's case dismissed and later refused to let Trump use immunity as a defense, citing the delay in attempting to invoke it.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba called the ruling "fundamentally flawed" and said Trump would pursue an "immediate review" by the Supreme Court. Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan said in a statement, "We are pleased that the Second Circuit affirmed Judge Kaplan's rulings and that we can now move forward with trial." Carroll was awarded $5 million in a civil trial against the former president in May after a jury in a second lawsuit found Trump liable for sexual abusing and defaming her. Judge Kaplan ruled that the findings applied to Carroll's 2019 suit, making Trump's denial defamatory and leaving the January trial to decide how much Trump is to pay Carroll in damages.
