A federal judge in New York on Monday, August 7, dismissed a lawsuit by Donald Trump, who considers himself defamed by E. Jean Carroll, a former journalist for Elle magazine, who for years has accused the former US president of raping her in 1996.
Mr. Trump, 77, who hopes to win back the White House in 2024, was found responsible on May 9 by a jury in a New York civil court for the sexual assault – not the rape – of the former columnist , to whom he must pay 5 million dollars (the equivalent of 4.5 million euros) in damages.
The 79-year-old woman filed a new defamation lawsuit two weeks after the trial for comments Mr. Trump made on CNN the day after the verdict: “She’s crazy,” he said. As part of Ms. Carroll’s new move, Mr. Trump made counter-arguments to what he said was a “made-up” story, calling for a new civil trial.
First prosecutions from November 2019
Also on CNN in May, Ms. Carroll claimed, “Oh yeah, he did, he did,” after the jury ruled she was sexually assaulted but not assaulted. rape. However, according to an order on Monday from Manhattan Federal Civil Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s accusations that Mr. Trump raped her in a dressing room of the lingerie department of the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, in the spring of 1996, are “substantially true”.
The jury on May 9 had agreed that Mr. Trump had penetrated her with a finger but not his penis, a crime that would have constituted rape under the law in New York. But for Judge Kaplan, “these two acts do constitute rape in common parlance, according to the definition of some dictionaries, in federal and other state criminal law” American.
Ms. Carroll’s new complaint at the end of May had been filed as part of the first civil lawsuits brought in November 2019, again for defamation, against the former president. This 2019 action had been delayed by procedural battles, including whether Mr. Trump enjoyed presidential immunity in 2019, while he was still in the White House (2017-2021).