No shield for Trump in rape accuser’s case as court declines to rule

A Washington, D.C., appeals court on Thursday declined to shield Donald Trump from the primary of two civil defamation lawsuits by E. Jean Carroll, a author who said the previous U.S. president raped her nearly three many years ago.

The district’s highest local court, the Court of Appeals, said it didn’t have enough facts to choose whether Trump deserved immunity, after he accused the previous Elle magazine columnist in June 2019 of lying in regards to the alleged encounter.

A ruling that Trump was acting as president, and never in his personal capability, would have immunized him and doomed Carroll’s first lawsuit because the federal government could substitute itself because the defendant, and the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.

The court sent the case back to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which had last September asked the Washington court for guidance on local law.

Lawyers for Carroll had no immediate comment.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said in an email: “We’re confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump’s favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll’s case.”

Thursday’s decision doesn’t affect Carroll’s second lawsuit, where an April 25 trial is scheduled in Manhattan federal court.

That case also features a battery claim under a Latest York law that lets sexual abuse survivors sue their alleged attackers even when statutes of limitations have run out.

Trump desires to postpone the trial no less than until May 23, saying “prejudicial media coverage” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s recent criminal case against him would go away that case “top of mind” for many prospective jurors.

His lawyers said a delay was also needed after they belatedly learned from Carroll’s legal team that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a outstanding Democratic donor, was footing a few of her legal bills.

They said that raised the query of whether Carroll sued Trump, a Republican, to advance a political agenda.

In an order late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan refused to delay the trial, but said Trump could gather more details about Hoffman’s role and Carroll’s understanding of it.

The judge didn’t address whether Bragg’s case jeopardized Trump’s right to a good trial in Carroll’s case.

Carroll, 79, has long accused Trump of stalling to maintain jurors from ever hearing her case.

Each of Carroll’s lawsuits stem from her alleged encounter with Trump in late 1995 or early 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.

Carroll has said Trump asked for her assist in buying a present for an additional woman, but later “maneuvered” her into and sexually assaulted her in a dressing room.

After Carroll described the incident in a June 2019 Latest York magazine excerpt from her memoir, Trump told a reporter on the White House that he didn’t know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she concocted the rape claim to sell her book.

He largely repeated his denial in October 2022, when he called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam” on his Truth Social media platform.

The Washington appeals court said that in deciding whether people act within the scope of their employment, the district generally looks as to whether they’re motivated by a purpose to serve their employer across the time they acted.

Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby said determining what was on Trump’s mind when he first talked about Carroll was a “fact-intensive query” that “can’t be resolved as a matter of law in either party’s favor on the record before us.”

At trial, Carroll is anticipated to introduce testimony from two women who’ve said Trump sexually assaulted them, and a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump making vulgar comments about women that threatened to upend his 2016 White House run.

On April 4, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in an indictment filed by Bragg, related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.