Donald Trump has lost his bid to throw out the first defamation lawsuit brought against him by E Jean Carroll.
On Thursday, US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan rejected the former president’s claims that he had absolute presidential immunity from the civil case, paving the way for the magazine columnist to pursue around $10m in damages from him.
The former president had claimed that he had absolute presidential immunity from the lawsuit and that many of his statements about the magazine columnist were protected under free speech rights because they were his opinion.
He argued that Ms Carroll “consented” to his statements by purposely waiting decades to go public, until he was in the White House, leaving him “no choice” but to defend himself.
Ultimately, he said the case should be thrown out.
On Thursday, US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan dismissed this claim, saying there was no merit to his argument and that Mr Trump surrendered absolute presidential immunity as a defence by failing to assert it years ago when the lawsuit was first filed.
The judge also reminded Mr Trump that presidential immunity is not a “get-out-of-damages-liability-free card” that allowed him to say or do anything he wanted “even if that conduct is disconnected entirely from an official function”.
Judge Kaplan added that he also took into consideration that Ms Carroll is now 79 years old and has been pursuing these claims against Mr Trump for the last three-and-a-half years.
“There is no basis to risk prolonging the resolution of this litigation further by permitting Mr Trump to raise his absolute immunity defense now at the eleventh hour when he could have done so years ago,” he said.
Ms Carroll’s attorney Robbie Kaplan, who is unrelated to the judge, welcomed the ruling, saying that it “confirms that once again, Donald Trump’s supposed defences to E Jean Carroll’s defamation claims don’t work”.
E Jean Carroll outside court following the verdict in the second suit— (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
She added: “Today’s decision removes one more impediment to the January 15 trial on E Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”
Mr Trump’s lawyers did not immediately comment on what marks the latest blow to his legal battle with Ms Carroll.
The ruling is in relation to the first of two defamation lawsuits Ms Carroll filed in 2019 when she first came forward with allegations that Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room in Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman in 1996.
She said that she and Mr Trump randomly bumped into each other and they got chatting, before Mr Trump pinned her against a wall in a dressing room and sexually assaulted her.
Mr Trump repeatedly stalled proceedings in the lawsuit but – after New York state passed the Adult Survivors Act taking away the statute of limitations on rape allegations – she filed a second suit.
In a trial for the second suit, a jury found that Mr Trump did sexually abuse Ms Carroll and that he then defamed her when he denied it. The jury did not find Mr Trump liable for rape. Ms Carroll was awarded $5m in the verdict.
This week, the former president countersued Ms Carroll in that case, claiming that she defamed him in a CNN interview after the verdict where she doubled down on the rape accusation.
Ms Carroll meanwhile has already brought new defamation claims against Mr Trump in that case after he continued to deny the assault took place despite the verdict.
Additional reporting from Wires
