Appeals court denies Trump's 'presidential immunity' argument in defamation lawsuit
NEW YORK — A federal appeals court has ruled that former President Donald Trump has waived his right to argue that presidential immunity protects him from liability for statements he made in 2019 when he denied raping advice columnist E. Jean Carroll .
A three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Wednesday upheld a lower court's ruling that Trump had effectively waived the immunity defense by not raising it when Carroll first filed a defamation lawsuit four years ago had filed against him.
Alina Habba, Trump's attorney, said in an emailed statement that the ruling was “fundamentally flawed” and that the former president's legal team would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, an attorney for Carroll, said the ruling allows the case to be heard next month.
“We are pleased that the Second Circuit affirmed Judge Kaplan's rulings and that we can now move forward with the trial next month on January 16,” she said in an emailed statement.
Carroll's lawsuit seeks more than $10 million in damages from Trump for comments he made in 2019 — the year Carroll said in a memoir that the Republican sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in 1996. Trump has adamantly denied ever having Carroll in the store or even knowing her.
Trump, who is running for president again next year, is also trying to use the presidential immunity argument as he faces accusations of a scheme to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In Carroll's lawsuit, his lawyers argued that the lower court judge was wrong to reject the immunity defense when it was raised three years after Carroll sued Trump.
But in a written decision Wednesday, the appeals court panel sided with U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who said in August that the defense had been forfeited because attorneys waited so long to assert it.
“First, defendant unnecessarily delayed in raising presidential immunity as a defense,” the appeals court argued in its ruling. “Three years elapsed between the defendant's response and his request for permission to amend his response. According to our precedents, a delay of three years is more than sufficient to qualify as 'unnecessary'.”
The appeals court has urgently dealt with the issue ahead of the January trial, which will focus on determining the damages to be awarded to Carroll.
Last spring, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, but rejected her claim that he raped her. It awarded Carroll $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation over comments Trump made about her last year.
The verdict meant that the original and long-delayed defamation case she filed in 2019 had yet to be decided. Kaplan ruled that the jury's findings earlier this year also applied to the 2019 lawsuit, as Trump's statements, made in different years, were essentially the same in both lawsuits, leaving only the issue of damages to be determined .