The D.C. Court of Appeals on Thursday said it would not be the decision-maker in an appeal brought by former President Donald Trump in writer E. Jean Carroll’s 2019 defamation lawsuit against him.
Trump had asked the appellate court to shield him from the first of two lawsuits he faces from Carroll, which accused him of slandering her from the White House when she publicly accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s. Trump called Carroll a liar and infamously denied sexually assaulting her because she was not his “type.”
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department has continued to defend Trump in that argument, maintaining it’s not him it’s trying to protect but federal employees from being sued.
The D.C. panel said it could not define whether Trump was speaking as president or Trump as the individual based on the facts provided and sent the matter back to New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Though the decision leaves the matter unresolved, it marks a win for Carroll, as an alternate ruling in Trump and the DOJ’s favor would have likely ended the case.
New York’s highest court could agree with Manhattan Federal Court Judge Kaplan’s original ruling in 2020, which sided with Carroll.
Accepting Trump’s position “would mean that a president is free to defame anyone who criticizes his conduct or impugns his character — without adverse consequences to that president and no matter what injury he inflicts on the person defamed,” Kaplan wrote in October 2020.
The court could also decide to send the matter back to Kaplan to develop the underlying facts.
Trump and Carroll are headed to trial on Apr. 25 in the second suit she’s filed against him, which includes sexual battery and defamation claims. That case was the first filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which lifted the statute of limitations to bring sexual assault claims for one year.
Trump is trying to have the trial pushed back, on Wednesday asking Judge Kaplan for a “cooling off” period from the media circus surrounding his ramping-up legal battles in his home state. He’s also accused Carroll of lying about who’s paying her legal fees. Carroll’s lawyers say he’s trying to delay the case.
Carroll and Trump’s lawyers declined to comment on the D.C. ruling.
