(New York) Donald Trump is due to testify on Wednesday in New York in a libel case launched in 2019 by former journalist E. Jean Carroll who accuses the former president of the United States of having raped her in the years 1990.
Posted at 7:34
A judge at the federal court in Manhattan on October 12 rejected a request by Mr. Trump to postpone his testimony before the American courts, the former head of state systematically contesting this action for three years.
But last Wednesday, New York judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Mr.me Carroll, 78, and Donald Trump, 76, were to be held on October 14 and 19, respectively.
We do not know if M.me Carroll testified on Friday and neither of the lawyers for either side responded to AFP’s solicitations.
The plaintiff, defended by Roberta Kaplan, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday “GOOD LUCK ROBBIE KAPLAN FOR TOMORROW” captioning “Carroll versus Trump” with a photo of her lawyer, but she deleted her tweet in the evening.
In this defamation proceeding, E. Jean Carroll, former columnist for the magazine Shehad attacked Donald Trump in civil in November 2019 in New York.
She accused him of defaming her for calling her accusations of rape in a dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s a “complete lie” in June 2019.
The Republican president, then in office (2017-2021), said he had never met her and that she was “not his kind of woman”.
The defamation suit was delayed by procedural battles, including whether Donald Trump should be represented by the US government, since he was president at the time of the impugned statements.
According to several media on Tuesday, the former president’s lawyers have always claimed that their client was protected by his immunity, in particular for defamatory remarks he allegedly made during his term of office.
But as noted by the site Vice News, the businessman delivered a new diatribe on October 12 on his social network Truth Social, making fun of the accusations of rape of E. John Carroll.
Thus, according to lawyers quoted by Vice News, the complainant could argue that Mr. Trump, this time as a private citizen, again defamed her.
And in his Oct. 12 order, Judge Kaplan indicated that E. Jean Carroll could seek damages from Donald Trump for the alleged rape, once a New York state law comes into force on Nov. 24 allowing to bring a civil complaint without taking into account the limitation periods.