Update: Former President Trump angrily lashed out Wednesday, calling the nation's legal system a "broken disgrace" after a judge ruled he must answer questions under oath next week in a defamation lawsuit lodged by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s. Trump also called the 2019 lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll a "hoax" and a "complete con job," the AP reports. He doubled down on the denial that led to the suit, saying, "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." He complained that he will have to "go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name." Our story from Wednesday follows:
Former President Donald Trump will have to sit for a deposition next week in a defamation lawsuit filed by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s, a judge ruled Wednesday. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected a request by Trump's lawyers that the planned testimony be delayed, the AP reports. The deposition is now scheduled for Oct. 19. The decision came in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, who says Trump raped her in an upscale Manhattan department store’s dressing room. Trump has denied it. Carroll is scheduled to be deposed Friday. Trump's legal team has tried various legal tactics to delay the lawsuit and prevent him from being questioned by Carroll's attorneys, but Kaplan wrote that it was time to move forward.
"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," he wrote. Carroll's lawsuit claims that Trump damaged her reputation in 2019 when he denied raping her. Trump's legal team has been trying to squash the suit by arguing that the Republican was just doing his job as president when he denied the allegations. That's a key question because if Trump was acting within the scope of his duties as a federal employee, the US government would become the defendant in the case.
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The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals said in a split decision last month that Trump was a federal employee when he commented on Carroll's claims, but it asked another court in Washington to decide whether Trump's public statements occurred during the scope of his employment. Kaplan said Trump has repeatedly tried to delay the collection of evidence in the lawsuit. "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."
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