New York judge: Defamation trial against Trump to start next week
Judge denies request for a stay of trial in connection with E Jean Carroll’s rape allegation against former US President Donald Trump.
A judge in New York has said a trial against former US President Donald Trump will begin next week as scheduled, rejecting a request from Trump to postpone proceedings.
The decision came Monday after Trump’s lawyers last week asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to allow a four-week “cooling off period” until at least May 23 to give Trump a fair trial.
They cited a recent “tidal wave of harmful media coverage” surrounding his recent indictment of falsifying business records in New York, making him the first US president to face criminal charges.
That criminal case is separate from the civil battery and libel suit, which was filed in November 2022 by former Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll. an alleged rapist after the criminal statute of limitations has expired.
In a written warrant on Monday, Kaplan said Carroll’s case had “no connection whatsoever” with New York’s state-level criminal prosecution.
Kaplan said there was no reason to believe it would be easier to seat a fair and impartial jury in May. He said some media coverage was based on Trump’s own public statements.
“It does not sit well for Mr. Trump to promote publicity for the trial and then claim that the coverage he promoted was detrimental to him,” Kaplan wrote.
The trial next week is to determine whether Trump defamed Carroll by denying her claim that he raped her in late 1995 or early 1996.
Carroll described the incident in a June 2019 New York Magazine excerpt from her memoir, saying it took place at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
She has said that Trump asked her for help buying a gift for another woman, but later “maneuvered” her into a dressing room, where he sexually assaulted her.
Trump responded to the allegation by saying “she’s not my type” and accused Carroll of fabricating the rape claim to sell books.
The defamation case is one of many legal issues the former president is currently facing.
In the New York criminal case, he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying company records related to a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. The case alleges that Trump committed the falsification in the service of a secondary crime, making it is elevated to a crime.
In another New York civil suit, New York Attorney General Letitia has accused James Trump and his family of fraud by overvaluing assets to lenders and insurers. The fraudulent statements were allegedly provided by the Trump Organization.
In the state of Georgia, Trump faces another criminal investigation into whether he violated state law when he pressured a local election official to “find” votes after his 2020 election loss. A decision on whether to sue Trump is expected in the coming weeks.
At the federal level, Trump is facing an investigation after about 100 documents marked “classified” were found at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after he left the White House. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has appointed a special counsel to lead the investigation.
Meanwhile, in December, a congressional panel referred Trump to the DOJ for possible crimes related to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US capital by supporters of the former president.
The same special counsel in the documents case is also leading a separate investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.