Trump deposed in rape-defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll
Former President Donald Trump was deposed Wednesday for a civil lawsuit accusing him of defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her, her representation confirmed.
“We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today. We are not able to comment further,” a spokesperson for the firm Kaplan Hecker Fink said in a statement.
Trump on Oct. 12 lost his bid to delay being questioned under oath by Carroll’s lawyers when a federal judge brushed aside arguments that a pending appeal in the lawsuit warranted putting the case on hold.
The timing of Trump’s deposition and its location were not immediately available Wednesday.
“As we have said all along, my client was pleased to set the record straight today. This case is nothing more than a political ploy like many others in the long list of witch hunts against Donald Trump,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said in a statement.
Carroll was scheduled to have been deposed for the case last Friday.
A trial in the case is scheduled for February.
Even if that trial is put on hold, or outright canceled as the result of the pending appeal, Carroll plans to sue the 76-year-old Trump in New York state court next month under a new law that lifted the statute of limitations for claims of rape and sexual abuse.
Carroll’s lawyers could use Trump’s Wednesday deposition in that planned suit.
The deposition comes two months after Trump refused to answer questions under oath in a deposition by attorneys for New York Attorney General Letitia James in connection with a civil investigation of his company, the Trump Organization. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 440 times in that deposition.
James last month sued Trump, his company, three of his adult children and others, alleging widespread fraud involving allegedly false financial statements related to the company’s business. James is seeking at least $250 million in damages in that case, as well as sanctions.
Carroll, 78, in a 2019 New York magazine article, accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter in the store.
Trump, who was president at the time the article appeared, responded that Carroll was lying and motivated by money and political considerations to concoct the account.
Carroll then sued Trump for defamation in New York state court.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/19/trump-being-deposed-in-rape-defamation-lawsuit-by-e-jean-carroll.html