Former President Donald Trump is not allowed to countersue and seek financial damages from the writer who accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, a judge ruled Friday, Bloomberg and CNBC report.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan chalked up the former president's counterclaim against E. Jean Carroll to a "bad faith" attempt at delaying the case and said that, even if Trump could countersue, proving his claims in court would be "futile," CNBC reports.
"The record convinces this court that the defendant's litigation tactics, whatever their intent, have delayed the case to an extent that readily could have been far less," the judge wrote.
Team Trump said it is "disappointed" with the court's decision, but nonetheless looks forward to "proving at trial that the plaintiff's claims have absolutely no basis in law or in fact," Trump's lawyer Alina Habba said in an email.
Carroll sued the ex-president for defamation in November of 2019, after he claimed she was both lying and driven by money when she accused Trump of raping her, per CNBC.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is working to replace Trump as the defendant in the case, arguing he is protected from the original lawsuit because he was not a private citizen when he made the allegedly defamatory claims, Bloomberg notes. If the DOJ succeeds, the case would be thrown out.