Trump slams Donald Trump after ordering testimony in E Jean Carroll lawsuit

Donald Trump angrily lashed out on Wednesday, calling the U.S. legal system a “grave disgrace” after a judge ruled he must answer questions in a defamation lawsuit filed under oath next week against a writer who says he raped she.

He also called the 2019 lawsuit, filed by Elle Magazine’s longtime advice columnist E Jean Carroll, a “hoax and a lie.”

Hours later, U.S. District Judge Lewis A Kaplan in Manhattan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to delay testimony scheduled for Oct. 19.

Carroll said Trump raped her in the locker room of the Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. He called the lawsuit “an outright scam.”

“I don’t know this woman, I don’t know who she is, except that she appears to have taken a picture years ago of me and her husband shaking hands at the reception line of a celebrity charity event,” Trump said.

“She made up a story completely, I met her in front of this crowded New York City department store and within minutes, ‘stunned’ her. It was a hoax and a lie, like the last seven years in Like all the other scams that play on me.

“Now all I have to do is go through years of legal bullshit in order to whitewash her and her lawyer’s false attack on me. This only happens to ‘Trump’!”

Carroll is scheduled to be ousted on Friday. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said she looks forward to filing new claims next month after New York state passed the Adult Survivor Act “and moving quickly to trial,” allowing Carroll to live without the law She filed a lawsuit against her for alleged rape, seeking damages. limit it.

A Kaplan spokesman said “Donald Trump’s latest statement is clearly not worthy of a response”.

Trump’s lawyers have tried various tactics to delay the lawsuit and prevent Carroll’s lawyers from questioning him. But Kaplan wrote that now is the time to move forward, especially given the “advanced age” of Carroll, 78, and Trump, 76, and other witnesses.

“Defendants should not be allowed time-out for plaintiffs trying to obtain remedy for allegedly grossly wronged circumstances,” he wrote.

Carroll’s lawsuit alleges that Trump damaged her reputation by denying rape her. Trump’s legal team argued that he was simply doing his job as president when he denied the allegations, including when he dismissed the accusers as “not my type.”

On Wednesday, Trump said: “And, while I shouldn’t say it, I will. This woman is not my type! She has no idea what day, week, or week this so-called ‘event’ is supposed to happen. A month, a year, or a decade. The reason she doesn’t know is because it never happened, and she doesn’t want to get into details or facts that could turn out to be wrong.”

If Trump acted within his responsibilities as a federal employee, the U.S. government would be the defendant in the original lawsuit.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said last month that Trump was a federal employee when he commented on Carroll’s claims. But it asked another court in Washington to decide whether the public statement took place during his employment.

Trump has repeatedly tried to delay gathering evidence, Kaplan said.

“Mr. Trump’s position on finding responsibility is inexcusable given his conduct to date in this case,” he wrote. “As this court has previously observed, Mr. Trump has filed suit since 2019, and the effect may be to delay it.”

The judge noted that, aside from the testimony of Trump and Carroll, evidence gathering for the lawsuit is effectively over.

“Mr. Trump has made extensive discoveries about the plaintiffs, but very little himself,” Kaplan said. “Completing these testimony, which has been delayed for years, will not unduly burden Mr. Trump, let alone any irreparable harm.”

The judge also said the testimony could be useful when Carroll’s attorneys file a new lawsuit next month. Whether or not the rape occurred is at the heart of the defamation allegations and the expected new lawsuit, the judge said.

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