No defense for Trump in rape accuser’s case as court refuses to rule

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NEW YORK, April 13 (Reuters) – An appeals court in Washington, DC, on Thursday refused to shield Donald Trump from the first of two civil defamation lawsuits by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says he was raped he former president of the US for almost three decades. a while ago.

The highest local district court, the Court of Appeals, said it did not have enough facts to decide whether Trump deserved immunity, after he accused the former Elle magazine columnist in June 2019 of lying about alleged encounter.

A ruling that Trump was acting as president, and not in his personal capacity, would immunize him and kill Carroll’s first case because the government can substitute itself as the defendant, and the government cannot be sued for defamation. -praise

The court sent the case back to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which in September asked the Washington court for guidance on the local law.

Thursday’s ruling does not affect Carroll’s second lawsuit, where an April 25 trial is scheduled in Manhattan federal court.

That case also included a battery claim under a New York law that allows survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attackers even after statutes of limitations run out.

Trump wants to delay that trial until at least May 23, saying “damaging media coverage” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s recent criminal case against him would leave that case “top of mind” for most prospective jurors.

Carroll’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said in an email: “We are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump’s favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll’s case.”

‘FACT-INTENSIVE QUESTIONS’

Both of Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump stem from their alleged encounter in late 1995 or early 1996 at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.

Carroll said Trump asked her for help buying a gift for another woman, but later “manipulated” her and sexually assaulted her in a dressing room.

After Carroll described the incident in a June 2019 New York magazine excerpt from his memoir, Trump told a White House reporter that he did not know Carroll, that he was “not my type,” and that he made a rape claim to sell her. book.

She often repeated her denial in October 2022, when she called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam” on her Truth Social media platform.

A Washington appeals court said that in deciding whether people acted within the scope of their employment, the district generally looks to whether they were motivated by a purpose to serve their employer at the time they acted.

Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby said determining what Trump had in mind when he first talked about Carroll is a “fact-intensive question” that “cannot be resolved as a matter of law in either party’s favor on the record before us.”

TRUMP WANTS MORE TIME

At trial, Carroll is expected to present testimony from two women who said Trump sexually assaulted them, and a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump making vulgar comments about women who threatened to withdraw his run in White House in 2016.

In a letter Thursday, Trump’s lawyers said a delay was also needed for more discovery after they learned late from Carroll’s legal team that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, was carrying out some on Carroll’s legal fees.

They said the involvement of Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor, raised the question of whether Carroll sued Trump, a Republican, to advance a political agenda.

Carroll’s lawyers called the request irrelevant if Trump lied about the rape, and said Trump sidestepped the argument by first raising and then dropping a similar request.

Carroll, 79, has long accused Trump of stalling to avoid jurors hearing his case.

Hoffman, a partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On April 4, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an indictment filed by Bragg, related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The case is Trump et al v. Carroll, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, No. 22-SP-0745.

Jonathan Stempel reports in New York

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