(New York) Former US President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear in April in New York in a defamation lawsuit brought by a journalist who accuses him of raping her in the 1990s, according to a court ruling on Tuesday.
A double court case of alleged rape and defamation has pitted E. Jean Carroll, 78, against Donald Trump, 76, before the federal civil court in Manhattan since 2019, both of whom produced their sworn depositions in October before the New York judge Lewis Kaplan.
According to a court document made public, Judge Kaplan on Tuesday signed an order setting April 10, 2023 for a defamation lawsuit against the former US president, as requested by Mr.me Carroll.
In these defamation proceedings, the author and former columnist of Elle magazine had attacked Donald Trump in civil proceedings in November 2019. She accused him of having defamed her for having called a “complete lie”, in June 2019, her allegations of rape in a dressing room of a New York department store in 1995 or 1996.
The Republican president then in office (2017-2021) replied that he had never met Mme Carroll and that she was “not his kind of woman”. His lawyers have also always claimed that he was protected in 2019 by his immunity as head of state.
As for the rape charges, Ms.me Carroll had not been able to file a complaint in 2019 since the alleged facts were prescribed.
However, on November 24, a new law in the State of New York (“Adult Survivors Act”) came into force allowing, for one year, victims of sexual assault to relaunch their legal action to demand a trial in civil.
The lawyers of M.me Carroll therefore filed a new complaint in New York on Thursday for “defamation” but also “assault” and “assault” and requested a civil trial in 2023 in order to obtain damages.
In the introduction to this complaint, which recounts all the facts alleged, Donald Trump is accused “about 27 years ago […] in the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in New York (of) grabbing E. Jean Carroll, slamming and pinning her against the wall of a dressing room with his shoulder and raped her”.
The complainant had been silent for 20 years before telling her story in a book, thanks to the #metoo movement launched in 2017 against violence against women.
Donald Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said Thursday that Ms.me Carroll “unfortunately constitutes a diversion of the objective of the law” of New York. In October, Mr Trump called the rape charges a “hoax and a lie”.