E. Jean Carroll (L) and Donald Trump (R) (image of Carroll via Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour; image of Trump via JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Author E. Jean Carroll’s first defamation case against former President Donald Trump survived on Thursday, after a D.C.-based appellate court declined to resolve the question of his immunity.
In 2019, Trump told reporters that Carroll wasn’t his “type” when asked about her accusations that he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. Carroll sued Trump shortly after that, and Trump claimed that he was absolutely immune from that lawsuit as a then-sitting president.
That position instigated a protracted legal battle. Trump lost at the trial court level, before securing a partial victory on appeal. The Second Circuit found that Trump was an “employee” of the U.S. government, but the appellate court punted a separate question to the D.C. Court of Appeals.
That question is whether Trump acted in his official capacity when he allegedly defamed Carroll.
On Thursday, an eight-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals would not provide a firm resolution.
“Under the law of the District of Columbia, and on the record before us, whether the President of the United States was acting within the scope of his employment is a question for the factfinder,” they wrote in a 52-page opinion.
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan declined to comment.
The ruling should not affect the date of the upcoming trial on April 25, which has been slated for Carroll’s separate lawsuit accusing Trump of sexual battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. A separate count in that case alleges that Trump defamed Carroll in a post on Truth Social, well after the end of his presidency.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba asserted that the appellate court gave the former president a road map to defeat the first lawsuit.
“Now that the D.C. Court of Appeals has clarified the certified question before it, we are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in Trump’s favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll’s case in its entirety,” Habba said.
Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said in an interview that the court’s decision defies tidy classification about who emerged the winner.
“Trump thought that he was going to get a victory and instead both sides live to fight another day,” said Epner, a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC.
The case at issue has been designated Carroll I in the court record.
Regardless of its resolution, Carroll II will head to a jury later this month, if Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan does not grant Trump his requested adjournment.
Read the ruling here.
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