June 29 (UPI) — Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit was made without merit, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
Trump had filed a motion for summary judgment to dismiss Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit filed in 2019. He argued he was entitled to immunity because he was president.
However, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that Trump already had waived immunity as a possible defense.
“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 said.
In a separate civil case brought by Carroll, Trump was found liable for battery and defamation and ordered to pay $5 million in compensation and punitive damages.
One of the allegations against Trump in that case was that he had defamed Carroll by publicly accusing her of lying about him sexually assaulting her. Carroll had alleged that Trump raped her in the dressing room of a department store in the 1990s.
During a CNN Town Hall soon after the judgement, Trump doubled down on his verbal barbs at Carroll, referring to her as a “whack job” and again accusing her of lying.
Carroll is seeking an additional award in the case she won in New York last month because she alleges that Trump again defamed her with comments he made the day after the judgement.
