Trump rape-defamation lawsuit to stay sealed for now

A Latest York federal judge on Monday afternoon delayed his planned unsealing of nearly three dozen pages of a deposition from former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit accusing him of battery and of defaming a author who says he raped her within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.

Judge Lewis Kaplan earlier Monday had ordered that section of Trump’s deposition unsealed.

Kaplan in that initial order noted that Trump’s lawyers last month didn’t respond inside a three-day window to lawyers for the author E. Jean Carroll on the query of whether the pages should proceed to be completely sealed or partially sealed.

Trump’s lawyers later Monday asked Kaplan for 3 more days to reply and detail their opposition to unsealing the pages in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Trump’s attorneys said they previously had believed, in consequence of a previous order by Kaplan, that Carroll’s lawyers, not they, were obligated to deal with the query of whether the deposition should remain under seal.

Kaplan agreed to present Trump’s lawyers the time they requested, keeping the documents out of public view, for now.

Carroll claims Trump defamed her when he denied her allegation in 2019 that he raped her in a dressing room within the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan within the Nineteen Nineties.

Trump, while president, had said Carroll was lying and was motivated by a political agenda and a desire to advertise sales of a book in making her claims.

Carroll originally sued Trump for defamation in late 2019 in Latest York state court. However the civil case was transferred to federal court a 12 months later as a part of an effort by the Justice Department to exchange Trump because the defendant with the U.S. government.

In October, she filed a second lawsuit against Trump after he wrote a scathing Oct. 12 social media post about her rape claim, which Carroll said constituted one other act of defamation.

That latest suit also added a count of battery, which Carroll was allowed to assert with the recent enactment of Latest York’s Adult Survivors Act, which opened a one-year window for adults to file civil claims of sexual assault even when those allegations fall outside of the conventional statute of limitations.

In a court filing in December, Carroll’s attorneys attached greater than 30 pages of a deposition they conducted of Trump on Oct. 19 over the course of about five and a half hours at his Mar-a-Lago club residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

The entire questions they posed and the answers he gave in that deposition — which was conducted as a part of Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit — were blacked out in a publicly available copy of the filing.

In his order Monday, Kaplan wrote that Carroll’s lawyers had notified Trump’s attorneys on Dec. 19 that they were obliged by the practice of his judicial chambers to file inside three days a letter explaining the necessity to seal or redact portions of Trump’s deposition.

Kaplan added that Trump, through his attorneys, “didn’t accomplish that, and has made no effort to justify the continued sealing of his deposition.”

The judge then ordered the court clerk to unseal the entire portions of Trump’s deposition that were attached as an exhibit to Carroll’s filing in December.

Shortly after Kaplan’s order appeared on the general public court docket, a letter from Trump’s lawyer Michael Madaio to the judge appeared there.

Madaio asked Kaplan for 3 days to file one other letter opposing the unsealing of excerpts of Trump’s deposition.

Madaio wrote that after Kaplan issued an order last month within the case, he had believed that the burden was on Carroll’s lawyers to clarify why unsealing the deposition transcript was crucial.

Kaplan endorsed Madaio’s request inside hours.

Lawyers for Trump and Carroll didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment Monday.

The trial for Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit has been scheduled for April 10. It shouldn’t be yet known if the second lawsuit will likely be handled as a part of that trial, or individually.

The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is considering the query of whether the allegedly defamatory statements Trump made about Carroll when he was president were throughout the scope of his role on the White House on the time, as defined by local District of Columbia law. Justice Department attorneys have previously argued that answering media questions was a part of his job as president and, subsequently, exempt from defamation claims.

If the appeals court rules those statements were throughout the scope of Trump’s employment, it could end Carroll’s first lawsuit, absent a Supreme Court ruling in her favor.

But that may not affect her second lawsuit, which covers statements Trump made well after he left the White House.

Correction: The unaffected lawsuit in query was Carroll’s second one. An earlier version misstated the number.