Trump has a deposition in E. Jean Carroll's defamation lawsuit. Here's what to know about the case.
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to sit for a deposition Wednesday in a federal defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, an author who says he raped her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the 1990s.
What are the latest developments?
Last week a federal judge in Manhattan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to delay the deposition while a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., weighs whether the case should be thrown out in its entirety.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump must answer questions under oath from Carroll’s attorneys. Carroll herself was scheduled to be deposed by Trump’s team on Friday.
In his ruling, Kaplan noted that Trump, 76, and Carroll, 78, and other witnesses “already are of advanced age” and that Trump “should not be permitted to run the clock out” on the suit.
Kaplan also denied Trump’s request to substitute the United States government into the case as a defendant on the grounds that the alleged defamation occurred when he was president.
What are Carroll’s allegations?
In a book excerpt published by New York magazine in 2019, Carroll wrote that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, said she ran into Trump at the store and he asked for advice on buying a gift for “a girl.”
They eventually ended up in the lingerie department, Carroll said, where Trump coerced her into a dressing room.
“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall,” she wrote. “He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coatdress and pulls down my tights.”
Trump has been accused by more than 20 women of sexual misconduct ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.
He denies the various allegations. In Carroll’s case, Trump also told a reporter that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type” and that she concocted the rape claim to sell her book.
Carroll then filed her defamation suit.
What other challenges is Trump facing?
The former president is currently facing legal battles in numerous criminal and civil proceedings — including the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, as well as a state prosecutor’s probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia — in addition to the House select committee’s investigation into the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
But according to Maggie Haberman, author of the recent book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Trump is fixated on this case.
“For whatever reason, he is very focused on this lawsuit,” Haberman said on CNN on Thursday.
What is Trump saying ahead of the deposition?
Following the judge’s recent ruling, Trump issued a lengthy statement calling the case a “complete con job” and the U.S. legal system a “broken disgrace.”
Trump also repeated his claims that he does not know Carroll and that she is not his “type.”
“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her,” he said in his statement. “It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!
“E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance,” Trump said, adding: “Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said the statement “obviously does not merit a response.”
What’s next?
The defamation lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 6. But Carroll is planning to file a sexual battery lawsuit against Trump after New York passed a law — the Adult Survivors Act — giving adult sexual assault victims a one-year window to file such civil suits even if the statutes of limitations have long expired.
In a court filing made public last month, Carroll’s attorney said she plans to file her new case on Nov. 24, the start of the window under the new law. She also plans to ask the judge to have the two cases tried together.
