Donald Trump Ordered to Sit for Deposition in Rape Defamation Trial

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Donald Trump must sit for a deposition next week concerning the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused the former president of raping her in the 1990s. Trump, when the allegations were made public in 2019, defended himself by saying, classically, that he couldn’t have raped her because “she’s not my type.”

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the “advanced age” of everyone involved was an important factor. “The defendant should not be permitted to run the clock out on plaintiff’s attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong,” Kaplan wrote.

Carroll will be deposed on Friday. Trump’s deposition is scheduled for Oct. 19.

Jezebel previously reported:

Carroll has been wrapped up in an ongoing defamation lawsuit against Trump since 2019, after he called her a liar for claiming that he sexually assaulted her, an incident that she first recounted in an excerpt from her 2019 book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal. Published by The Cut, the excerpt provided an in-depth account of an encounter with the ex-president in late 1995 or early 1996, when Carroll said he forced himself on her in a Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room and briefly penetrated her. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying that Carroll is “totally lying” and that she is “not [his] type.”

Just days after the allegations were published, Trump said Carroll was just using him to sell her memoir. “I don’t know anything about her,” he said in an interview in the Oval Office. “I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her. She is—it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.”

Today, Trump maintains his innocence. “We look forward to establishing on the record that this case is, and always has been, entirely without merit,” his attorney Alina Habba said in a statement to the AP.

Carroll’s attorney said in an August letter that disclosure of evidence in the case has been entirely one-sided. Roberta A. Kaplan says Carroll’s side has provided 30,469 pages of records from Carroll, hundreds via subpoenas to people not involved in the suit, and 19 interrogatories.

Trump’s attorneys have sent “boilerplate” responses (and late ones at that) to every request made by Carroll’s team, according to a her attorneys. Kaplan suggested in the August letter that a deposition is a last resort because Trump’s team is so uncooperative to the disclosure process.

Kaplan, the judge, agreed: “Mr. Trump has conducted extensive discovery of the plaintiff, yet produced virtually none himself. Completing these depositions — which already have been delayed for years — would impose no undue burden on Mr. Trump, let alone any irreparable injury.”

This is separate from the lawsuit Carroll intends to file under the Adult Survivors Act in New York when the law takes effect in November. The law opens a one-year window for survivor over 18 to sue an abuser in civil court in an effort to remedy statute of limitations on some crimes.

Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of rape. His ex-wife Ivana described a violent assault during their marriage in a deposition only a few years after. If you can stomach the 20 or more stories, Washington Post has a running list.

Carroll tweeted on Wednesday of the news: