Former president Donald Trump must sit for a deposition in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by E Jean Carroll, an author who has accused the ex-president of raping her in the 1990s.
Mr Trump has long denied the nature of Ms Carroll’s allegations and derided her as a liar in 2019 during an inteview from the Oval Office with The Hill.
That interview is now at the centre of her lawsuit, and plays an interesting role in his choice of legal representation. As it occurred in his office, Mr Trump and his legal representatives — the US Department of Justice — have argued that the ex-president made his remarks as part of his official duties as president. As such, the government has argued in Mr Trump’s defence that his words were protected under federal law shielding individual governmental employees from lawsuits over actions they performed in the service of their jobs.
It’s a controversial stance that has been roundly criticised by Ms Carroll’s attorneys, who celebrated their partial victory on Wednesday.
“We are pleased that Judge Kaplan agreed with our position not to stay discovery in this case. We look forward to filing our case under the Adult Survivors Act and moving forward to trial with all dispatch,” said Robert Kaplan, Ms Carroll’s lead attorney.
Mr Trump will now face a deposition as Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his ruling that the former president’s claims that a deposition would cause irreperable harm to him were “inexcusable”.
The statement from Ms Carroll’s legal representative also notes that the author plans to sue Mr Trump for damages from the alleged rape itself through New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act, a newly-implemented law that allows rape victims to seek justice for crimes against them long after the statute of limitations for criminally prosecuting those crimes has run its course.
That lawsuit will just be one more stone in the landslide of legal fights bearing down on Mr Trump as he faces numerous investigations for his activities both as president and private citizen.
He remains under investigation by the Justice Department over allegedly illegal retention of documents, including classified materials, at Mar-a-Lago, and the agency remains embroiled in a grand jury probe into January 6 as well.
The ex-president also faces a criminal investigation into his 2020 campaign legal team (and possibly others) in Fulton County, Georgia, over their efforts to persuade officials in that state to get on board with Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, as well as a lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general seeking to bar him from doing business in that state.
