Donald Trump Should Face the Music

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A federal judge has denied Donald Trump’s request to delay his defamation trial with former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll. The former president’s trial will begin on April 25. Trump’s lawyers have argued that a fair and impartial jury cannot be selected because of the media coverage surrounding the indictment. The judge ruled that Trump had partially fueled media coverage of his hush money payments and therefore refused to postpone the trial.

A federal judge has rejected former president Donald Trump’s attempts to delay his defamation trial with former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Trump, who was recently charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree for allegedly making hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, has juggles a myriad of legal problems and is about to add a defamation trial to his list.

Caroll sued the former president over allegations he defamed her character when she denied sexually assaulting him in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City in the mid-1990s, including insulting her appearance The trial will begin on April 25 despite the best efforts of Trump’s legal team to delay it.

Former US President Donald Trump arrives at an event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 4, 2023. Despite his best efforts, Trump’s defamation trial in New York, and will still start on April 25, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted Monday morning that Trump’s legal team argued that picking a fair and impartial jury for Carroll’s defamation lawsuit would not be possible because his indictment—and subsequent media coverage—occurred in the same state. However, federal judge Lew Kaplan ruled that Trump slightly increased media coverage of his own actions and therefore did not grant the former president the delay he wanted.

“There is no justification for an adjournment. This case is completely unrelated to the state prosecution,” Kaplan wrote in his opinion statement, Rubin tweeted. “The suggestion that the recent media coverage of the impeachment in New York — coverage that was significantly (though certainly not entirely) invited or provoked by Mr. Trump’s own actions — will impede the selection of a fair and impartial jury on April 25 is pure speculation.”

But just in case we weren’t sure what he was referring to, Judge Kaplan dropped a footnote that makes it clear. Trump is subject to multiple, ongoing criminal and civil investigations, including two by the Special Counsel, one in Fulton County, and a NYAG civil fraud case. 5/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) April 17, 2023

Rubin tweeted that Kaplan also added a footnote explaining that because Trump is subject to several criminal and civil investigations, developments in any of the investigations could result in additional publicity, and that the “absence of any such developments in the period immediately prior to jury selection were not “realistic” for Carroll’s trial.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he did not know Carroll, saying that he was “not my type” and that he believed he made up the allegations to sell more copies of his memoir, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, published in 2019.

Carroll initially filed a defamation suit against Trump in 2019 for statements he made about him regarding his book sales, but that trial has been delayed indefinitely. The trial set to begin on April 25 is a second defamation lawsuit filed by Carroll in 2022.

Newsweek reached the Trump campaign for comment via email.

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