A United States federal judge today dismissed the defamation lawsuit that former United States President Donald Trump filed last June against the writer and journalist E. Jean Carroll, who a month earlier had won a civil lawsuit against him for sexual assault.
Trump had sued Carroll as a result of an interview he gave to CNN after the verdict in that case, in which, asked if the tycoon raped her, he assured: “Yes, he did.”
That jury ruling, which ordered Trump to pay compensation of five million dollars for having sexually abused her years ago and for having later defamed her when she publicly denounced the facts, considered him responsible for abuse, but not for rape under the laws from New York.
Based on that difference, the former US president sued Carroll, considering that he had made a false statement and that it harmed his image.
The judge, however, today dismissed this maneuver and pointed out that the victim’s words are “substantially true”, since the jury determined that Trump penetrated her, even if it was with his fingers and not with his penis, as required for a charge. of rape under New York law.
Trump and Carroll will face each other again in court starting in January, in another defamation trial resulting from a lawsuit filed in 2019 by the writer and journalist, also linked to the sexual abuse she suffered in the mid-1990s.
In a separate order, Judge Kaplan today ruled that Carroll’s lawyers can turn over to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office a recording of a pretrial sworn statement Trump made before them.
Prosecutors will be able to use that video to prepare for another trial, this time scheduled for March, in which the former president is charged with falsifying business documents in connection with an alleged 2016 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the presidential campaign.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project