Former President Donald Trump’s claims that absolute presidential immunity and free speech rights protect him from defamation claims by a New York columnist were rejected by a federal judge on Thursday.
What you need to know
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to dismiss a New York columnist’s defamation claims against him because he is entitled to absolute presidential immunity.
A. Kaplan said Thursday that writer E. Jean Carroll can continue her claims that Trump owes her at least $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages for comments she made after she won a verdict of ‘sexual abuse and defamation of $5 million against him.
After that verdict was returned earlier last month in federal court in Manhattan, he repeated comments he had made in 2019 when Carroll first made his allegations.
The writer, E. Jean Carroll, may continue to claim that Trump owes her at least $10 million in damages for comments she made before and after she won a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict against him in last month, according to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. said in a written opinion.
Trump sought to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that he is entitled to absolute presidential immunity, his statements were not defamatory, and that his statements were protected by the right to free speech.
Kaplan said Trump surrendered absolute presidential immunity as a defense by not asserting it years ago when the suit was filed. The suit was delayed until recently as appeals courts considered legal issues surrounding it.
Trump countersued Carroll this week, claiming she defamed him by continuing to insist he raped her even after a jury found otherwise.
After a jury returned its verdict last month in federal court in Manhattan, Trump made comments about a CNN town hall that prompted Carroll to pursue new defamation claims in a 2020 defamation lawsuit.
The jury award was the result of a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit filed last November after New York state temporarily enacted a law allowing victims of sexual assault to sue for damages stemming from assaults that occurred even decades earlier.
Trump’s claims on the CNN broadcast echoed statements he made when he was president in 2019 when Carroll published a memoir alleging Trump raped her in the dressing room of a luxury department store in midtown Manhattan in the spring of 1996.
Within hours of excerpts from the book being published in a magazine, Trump denied that a rape had occurred or that he ever knew Carroll.
“Mr. Trump did more than deny Ms. Carroll’s sexual assault allegation,” Kaplan wrote. “Instead, he accused Ms. Carroll of lying about sexually assaulting him to increase sales of her book, gain publicity, and/or further a political agenda.”
The judge said that the primary purpose of presidential immunity was to prevent the president from being diverted from public duties, but it was not a “free tort card that allows the president to say or do whatever he wants. Even if that conduct is totally disconnected from an official function”.
Kaplan said he took into account that Carroll is now 79 years old and has been filing claims against Trump for 3 1/2 years.
“There is no basis to risk further delaying the resolution of this litigation by allowing Mr. Trump to raise his absolute immunity defense now at the eleventh hour when he could have done so years ago,” he said .
Rejecting claims that Carroll’s lawsuit was about protected speech, Kaplan explained how defamation and slander are handled in court and why Trump’s statements could be interpreted to fit the legal definition of defamation , including that a jury had already considered it so.
Trump’s lawyers had no immediate comment.
Attorney Robbie Kaplan, who represents Carroll and is not related to the judge, said in a statement that the judge’s ruling “confirms that, once again, Donald Trump’s alleged defenses to the defamation claims of E . Jean Carroll don’t work.”
He added: “Today’s decision removes a further impediment to the January 15 trial on E Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has.
