E. Jean Carroll exits the Manhattan Federal Court following the verdict in the civil rape accusation case against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City, May 9, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
A federal judge on Thursday rejected Donald Trump‘s motion to dismiss the original civil defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, the writer who alleges the former president defamed her after she accused him of sexual assault.
Trump’s arguments for dismissing the case “are without merit,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The ruling followed a series of recent twists in the years long legal battle between Trump and Carroll, who alleges Trump raped her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when she took her story public decades later.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney who is not related to the judge, said in a statement that the ruling shows Trump’s defenses against the defamation claims “don’t work.”
“Trump chose to waive presidential immunity and now he must live with the results of that decision,” the attorney said.
A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Two days earlier, Trump filed a counterclaim against Carroll in the same case, accusing her of defamation by continuing to publicly say he raped her.
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