A federal judge in New York on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by Donald Trump who claims he is defamed by a former newspaper columnist who has for years accused the former US president of raping her in 1996. Mr. Trump, 77 year-old, who hopes to win back the White House in 2024, was found responsible on May 9 by a New York civil court jury for “sexual assault” (not “rape”) more than 27 years ago. years of author E. Jean Carroll, to whom he must pay five million dollars 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,” said the favorite for the Republican presidential primary. of November 2024. It is within the framework of this new step of Ms. Carroll that Mr. Trump brought counter-arguments to a story according to him “made up from scratch”, calling for a new civil lawsuit.
Also on CNN in May, the former Elle magazine columnist said, “Oh yes, he did, he did,” after the jury ruled she had been the victim of a “sexual assault but not of “rape”. However, according to an order on Monday by Manhattan federal civil court judge Lewis Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s accusations that Mr. Trump raped her in a dressing room in 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 recognized that Donald Trump had, on that day in 1996, penetrated him with a finger but not with his penis, a crime which would have constituted rape under the law in New York. But for Judge Kaplan, “in fact, these two acts do constitute ‘rape’ in common parlance, according to the definition of some dictionaries, in federal and other state criminal law “in the United States and abroad.
The new complaint at the end of May from Ms. Carroll had been paid 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 Donald Trump had presidential immunity in 2019, while he was in the White House (2017-2021).