A federal judge in New York dismissed on Monday a lawsuit by Donald Trump who considers himself defamed by a former columnist who has accused for years the former US president of having raped her in 1996.
A federal judge in New York dismissed on Monday a lawsuit by Donald Trump who considers himself defamed by a former columnist who has accused for years the former US president of having raped her in 1996.
Mr. Trump, 77, who hopes to win back the White House in 2024, was found responsible on May 9 by the jury of a civil court in New York for the “sexual assault” – not the “rape” – – more than 27 years ago by author E. Jean Carroll, to whom he must pay five million dollars in damages.
This 79-year-old woman had filed a new defamation complaint two weeks after the trial for remarks that Mr. Trump had made on CNN the day after the verdict: “She is crazy”, had launched the favorite for the Republican presidential primary from November 2024.
It is within the framework of this new approach by Ms. Carroll that Mr. Trump has brought counter-arguments to a story according to him “made up from scratch”, calling for a new civil trial.
Also on CNN in May, the former columnist for Elle magazine notably said “Oh yes he did, he did it”, after the jury found that she had been the victim of a “sexual assault ” but not of a “rape”.
However, according to an order on Monday by Manhattan federal civil court judge Lewis Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s accusations that Mr. Trump raped her in a dressing room in the lingerie department of the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, in the spring of 1996, are “true in substance”.
The jury, on May 9, had recognized that Donald Trump had, on that day in 1996, penetrated him with a finger but not with his penis, a crime which would have constituted rape under the law in New York.
But for Judge Kaplan, “in fact, these two acts do constitute + rape + in everyday language, according to the definition of certain dictionaries, in federal criminal law and other States” American and abroad.
The new complaint at the end of May from Ms. Carroll had been paid as part of the first civil lawsuits brought in November 2019, again for defamation, against the former president.
This 2019 action had been delayed by procedural battles, including whether Donald Trump enjoyed presidential immunity in 2019, while he was in the White House (2017-2021).
2023-08-08 03:00:25
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