Trump faces new trial date in rape accuser’s lawsuit By Reuters

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Donald Trump proclaims that he’ll as soon as once more run for U.S. president within the 2024 U.S. presidential election throughout an occasion at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Seaside, Florida, U.S. November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. choose on Tuesday delayed by two months the scheduled defamation trial of Donald Trump by a author who accused the previous U.S. president of rape.

U.S. District Decide Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan set an April 10, 2023 date for E. Jean Carroll to attempt to show that Trump lied by denying he raped her about 27 years in the past in a dressing room in a Bergdorf Goodman division retailer.

Kaplan didn’t rule on Carroll’s request to carry one trial combining the lawsuit, which the previous longtime Elle journal columnist filed in November 2019, with a second lawsuit she filed final week accusing Trump of battery.

Carroll, 78, introduced that case underneath the Grownup Survivors Act, a brand new regulation in New York that provides sexual assault victims a one-year window to sue over alleged assaults that occurred way back even when statutes of limitations have run out.

Trump, 76, opposed combining the lawsuits, along with his legal professionals saying they didn’t know who would characterize him within the second lawsuit. He had wished a Might 8, 2023 trial for the primary lawsuit. The unique date was Feb. 6.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan mentioned she was happy with the brand new trial date, and understood the choice to defer rulings within the second case. Each lawsuits search unspecified damages.

Attorneys for Trump didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Carroll made the rape accusation in her memoir, and sued Trump after he claimed in June 2019 to not know her and mentioned she was “not my kind.”

Her first lawsuit has been delayed as appeals courts take into account whether or not Trump was performing as president when he scoffed on the rape declare.

If he was, then the US can be substituted because the defendant, and the primary lawsuit would fail as a result of the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.

Carroll’s second lawsuit additionally features a defamation declare over an Oct. 12 social media publish the place Trump repeated his denial and known as the rape declare a “hoax” and “lie.”

Immunity would probably not be a problem there as a result of Trump has not been president since January 2021.

The instances are Carroll v. Trump, U.S. District Court docket, Southern District of New York, Nos. 20-07311 and 22-10016.