President Donald Trump has lost a bid to block an advice columnist’s lawsuit over his remarks that she lied in accusing him of rape.
In a decision this week, a Manhattan judge declined to order a hearing on Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit and to put evidence-gathering on hold in the meantime.
A lawyer for Trump, Lawrence Rosen, had argued the New York court shouldn’t handle the case, saying that the president’s statements weren’t made in the state and that Trump currently lives in Washington, not New York, his longtime home.
New York state judge Doris Ling-Cohan said the argument wasn’t properly backed up by an out-of-court statement under oath or even a social media post.
President Donald Trump has lost a bid to block an advice columnist’s lawsuit’s over his remarks that she lied in accusing him of rape. In a decision Monday, a Manhattan judge declined to order a hearing on Trump’s request to dismiss E. JeanCarroll’s defamation suit and to put evidence-gathering on hold in the meantime
‘There is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support,’ Ling-Cohan wrote in a decision provided to lawyers in the case Thursday.
In a decision Monday, a Manhattan judge had declined to order a hearing on Trump’s request to dismiss Carroll’s defamation suit and to put evidence-gathering on hold in the meantime.
Now the longtime Elle magazine advice columnist may proceed with her lawsuit accusing Trump of defamation for denying he raped her approximately 24 years ago in Manhattan department store, Bergdorf Goodman.
‘There is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support,’ New York state judge Doris Ling-Cohan wrote in a decision provided to lawyers in the case Thursday
Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in the Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
In a New York magazine piece and a subsequent book – What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal – Carroll said the two ran into each other, bantered and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman.
She appeared on the magazine cover wearing the same coat from the day she says she encountered Trump in the Fall of 1995 or Spring of 1996.
Then, she said, Trump grabbed her arm, maneuvered her into a fitting room and assaulted her.
Trump said in June that Carroll was ‘totally lying,’ calling the accusation ‘fake news.’
He said they had never met, though a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event.
Trump dismissed the picture, saying he was just ‘standing with my coat on in a line.’
‘I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?’ he told The Hill newspaper in Washington.
She claimed Trump grabbed her arm, maneuvered her into a fitting room at Bergdorf Goodman (above) and assaulted her in the Fall of 1995 or Spring of 1996
In a New York magazine (left) piece and a subsequent book, Carroll said the two ran into each other, bantered and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal (right)
Trump said last June that Carroll was ‘totally lying,’ calling the accusation ‘fake news’
Trump claimed that he had never met Carroll, but the advice columnist and author submitted photographic evidence that they had in the lawsuit. The photo above shows Trump and first wife Ivana (left and right) with Carroll and her then-husband John Johnson (center)
Carroll alleges in the suit that Trump smeared her and harmed her career.
Many readers of her longtime Elle magazine column stopped writing to her for advice, according to the suit.
It seeks unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said she was pleased with the ruling.
‘We look forward to moving ahead in this case and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client and had not even met her,’ Kaplan said in a statement.
Trump has denied accusations by more than a dozen women that he made unwanted sexual advances toward them before entering politics.
One of those women, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, is also suing him for defamation.
A request for comment on the decision was sent to Rosen.
Carroll (pictured June 23, 2019) alleges in the suit that Trump smeared her and harmed her career
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (pictured) said: ‘We look forward to moving ahead in this case and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client’
Trump has denied accusations by more than a dozen women that he made unwanted sexual advances toward them before entering politics. One of those women, Summer Zervos (pictured October 2018), a former contestant on Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, is also suing him for defamation