Donald Trump’s Defamation Lawsuit Moves Forward As He Calls The Legal System A ‘Broken Disgrace’

Donald Trump went on another angry rant this week— lashing out and dubbing the US legal system to be a “broken disgrace.” This outburst occurred after a judge ruled that he must answer questions under oath in a defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who claims that Trump raped her.

The twice-impeached former president, 76, called the 2019 lawsuit by Carroll, 78, (a longtime columnist and journalist for Elle Magazine), “a hoax and a lie.” The billionaire’s tantrum came hours after Lewis A. Kaplan— a US district judge in Manhattan— rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to delay a deposition that was scheduled for October 19th. He will now have to appear in court next week.

Carroll is accusing Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, in the dressing room of a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman store. Trump has deemed the lawsuit to be “a complete con job.” He said, “I don’t know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event.”

Trump continued, adding, “She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.” He went on, “Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”

Carroll is scheduled to be deposed on October 14th. Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said she looked forward to filing new claims in November “and moving forward to trial with all dispatch” after the New York State passed the Adult Survivors Act. This allows Carroll to sue for damages for the alleged rape— without the statue of limitations blocking it. The latest statement from Donald Trump “obviously does not merit a response,” according to a spokesperson for Kaplan’s firm.

Trump’s lawyers have tried to delay the lawsuit, as The Guardian reports, and to prevent him from being questioned by Carroll’s attorneys. Kaplan, however, wrote that it was time to proceed, especially with the “advanced age” of Carroll, Trump, and other potential witnesses. Judge Kaplan explained, “The defendant should not be permitted to run the clock out on plaintiff’s attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong.”

Carroll’s lawsuit claims that Trump ruined her reputation after he denied raping her. The Apprentice star’s legal team has argued in response that he was focusing on other tasks as president when he denied the allegations— even when he publicly dismissed his accuser as “not my type.”

On October 12th, Trump doubled down on this, “And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type! She has no idea what day, what week, what month, what year, or what decade this so-called ‘event’ supposedly took place. The reason she doesn’t know is because it never happened, and she doesn’t want to get caught up with details or facts that can be proven wrong.”

If Trump really was acting “within the scope of his duties as a federal employee,” The Guardian writes, “the US government would become the defendant in the original lawsuit.”The second US circuit court of appeals said in September that Trump was a federal employee when he commented on Carroll’s claims. After this, it asked another court in Washington to decide, the publication reports, whether the public statements occurred “during the scope of his employment.”

Kaplan has said that Trump repeatedly tried to delay the collection of necessary evidence. “Given his conduct so far in this case, Mr. Trump’s position regarding the burdens of discovery is inexcusable,” he wrote. “As this court previously has observed, Mr. Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it.”

The judge also noted that the collection of evidence for the lawsuit to go to trial was virtually concluded— that is— apart from the depositions of Trump and Carroll. “Mr Trump has conducted extensive discovery of the plaintiff, yet produced virtually none himself,” Kaplan said. “Completing these depositions – which already have been delayed for years – would impose no undue burden on Mr Trump, let alone any irreparable injury.”

Kaplan also said that the deposition could be useful when Carroll’s lawyer files the new lawsuit in November. Whether the rape occurred, the judge said, is central to the defamation claims. It is also crucial for the the anticipated new lawsuit, he added.