A New York judge on Wednesday rejected a request by former US President Donald Trump to postpone his testimony, scheduled for next week, in a defamation case against a former journalist who accuses him of rape in the 1990s , says a court document.
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In this case, E. Jean Carroll, known for having been a columnist in Elle magazine, had sued Donald Trump in civil proceedings in November 2019 in a New York state court.
She accused him of defaming her for calling a ‘complete lie’, in June 2019, his accusations that he raped her in the fitting room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s The Republican president, then in office, had claimed that he had never met her and that she was “not his kind of woman”.
The complaint has been delayed by procedural battles, including whether Donald Trump should be represented by the US government in the case as president at the time.
For Judge Lewis Kaplan, the question is not definitively settled, but it cannot delay the case any longer, and the depositions of E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump, scheduled respectively for Friday and next Wednesday, in particular because of the “advanced age” of the parties, 78 years old for the complainant, 76 for Donald Trump.
“As this court has already noted, Mr. Trump has attacked these proceedings since they began in 2019, with the effect and probably the objective of delaying them,” said Judge Kaplan.
The magistrate also notes in his decision the intention of the former journalist to claim damages from the former American president for the alleged rape himself, when a new law of the State of New York will come into force allowing bring a civil complaint without taking into account the limitation periods. This law, entitled “Adult Survivors Act”, will be effective on November 24.