Left: Donald Trump (Brandon Bell/Getty Images). Right: E. Jean Carroll (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s attempt to have E. Jean Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit against him dismissed.
“His arguments are without merit,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in the introduction of his 46-page opinion on Trump’s motion for summary judgment, issued Thursday.
Specifically, Kaplan found that Trump’s argument that presidential immunity was “non-waivable” and that he had already waived the defense by failing to include it in his initial answer to Carroll’s complaint.
In rejecting Trump’s argument that “absolute presidential immunity is grounded in the separation of powers doctrine” and therefore implicated jurisdictional issues, Kaplan wrote that “‘separation of powers’ is not a magic phrase that automatically transforms any issue it touches” into an obstacle for a court asserting jurisdiction.
Kaplan called another aspect of Trump’s legal argument about the separation of powers as “[lacking] logical coherence and is plainly frivolous.”
Kaplan also found that Trump’s alternative request to amend his initial response to Carroll’s complaint to assert an immunity defense would be unfairly prejudicial to her — and that it wouldn’t hold up anyway.
“Even assuming that the president’s decision publicly to deny an accusation of personal wrongdoing comes within the outer perimeter of his official duties, it does not follow that the president’s own personal attacks on his or her accuser equally fall within that boundary,” Kaplan wrote. “Mr. Trump does not identify any connection between the allegedly defamatory content of his statements – that Ms. Carroll fabricated her sexual assault accusation and did so for financial and personal gain – to any official responsibility of the president. Nor can the Court think of any possible connection.”
Kaplan noted that Trump already appears to have made efforts to delay the litigation of the case and that allowing him to amend his complaint would only further that delay.
“[T]hose additional delays would further prejudice Ms. Carroll unfairly,” the judge wrote. “She now is 79 years old and, as just mentioned, has been litigating this case for more than three and a half years. There is no basis to risk prolonging the resolution of this litigation further by permitting Mr. Trump to raise his absolute immunity defense now at the eleventh hour when he could have done so years ago.”
Kaplan also found Trump’s allegation that Carroll essentially “consented” to defamatory comments from him by publicly accusing him of assault unconvincing.
“Mr. Trump’s argument amounts to suggesting that any time an individual comes forward with an accusation of wrongdoing against a public official, that person thereby consents to the official stating anything he or she wishes in response, no matter how calumnious,” Kaplan writes. “As Ms. Carroll aptly states, ‘[w]hen a survivor of sexual assault makes the choice to speak up, that choice does not constitute consent to whatever defamatory lies their abuser may unleash in response.””
Carroll filed her lawsuit in 2020 over comments Trump made in June 2019 denying her allegations that he raped and sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s. At the time, he insisted that he never met her and suggested that she made up the allegations for financial gain.
It is only the latest defeat in Trump’s long-running fight with Carroll, a writer who, in a separate case, sued Trump for sexual abuse, rape, and defamation stemming from statements published on his social media platform Truth Social in October 2022. In May, a federal jury awarded Carroll $5 million, finding unanimously that the former president did sexually abuse and defame her, although jurors did not conclude that rape occurred.
Carroll has since sought to increase the amount in damages after Trump’s degrading remarks about her during a CNN town hall the day following the verdict. Trump, in turn, has countersued Carroll for defamation over statements she made the day after the verdict — also on CNN — insisting that he did rape her.
“Oh yes he did,” Carroll said in an interview. “Oh yes he did.”
In a statement, Carroll’s attorney Robbie Kaplan noted that Trump’s legal efforts, in this case, have failed multiple times.
“Judge Kaplan’s denial of summary judgment confirms that once again, Donald Trump’s supposed defenses to E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claims don’t work,” Robbie Kaplan said. “Trump chose to waive presidential immunity and now he must live with the results of that decision. Today’s decision removes one more impediment to the January 15 trial on E. Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”
The case is set to go to trial on Jan. 15, 2024.
Read Judge Kaplan’s ruling, below.
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