Judge Rules Trump Must Be Deposed in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case Author E. Jean Carroll attends the 2019 Glamour Women Of The Year Summit at Alice Tully Hall on Nov. 10, 2019, in New York City. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour)
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Wednesday, 12 October 2022 02:28 PM EDT
Former President Donald Trump must sit for a deposition in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by author E. Jean Carroll over comments he made about her while denying her claims that he raped her in a store in the mid-1990s, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
"Given his conduct so far in this case, Mr. Trump's position regarding the burdens of discovery is inexcusable," U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote in his ruling that rejects a request from the former president's attorneys to delay the deposition, reports The Washington Examiner. "As this Court previously has observed, Mr. Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it."
Kaplan said in the ruling that Trump has tried several times to delay the collection for the ruling, and said he "should not be permitted to run the clock out" on Carroll, who made the claims of rape in a book she released in 2019.
Carroll claims that she encountered Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman store in New York City in either 1995 or 1996, and that he had pushed her against a changing room door before sexually assaulting her.
Trump has insisted that Carroll was "totally lying" and dismissed a photo of the two of them at a party years before, claiming that he had "no idea who she is."
He also told reporters that the author was not "my type," and after she sued him, he claimed she could not proceed with her claims because he was president at the time of his comments and that they were protected.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 27 voted 2-1 to seek input from an appeals court in Washington about whether Trump was protected, after determining that while his office could give him immunity as a government employee, it could not determine if the statements fell within his job description.
Carroll also plans to sue Trump under New York's New Adult Survivors Act, which lets people over the age of 18 sue people they claim sexually assaulted them.
There is no statute of limitations under the new law, and Carroll's attorney wrote in August to a New York Judge that the team plans to file its lawsuit on Nov. 24, the date when all residents can start their legal proceedings.