Donald Trump is set to appear for a deposition on Wednesday as part of a defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist who claims the ex-president raped her years ago.
Trump has long tried to delay the case and avoid testifying, ABC News reports. But Judge Lewis Kaplan last week rejected his attempt to again slow proceedings, ruling Trump "should not be permitted to run the clock out on plaintiff's attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong."
Carroll sued Trump for defamation in 2019, after he denied "her claim that he raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s," CNN writes. She now plans to sue Trump for the alleged assault under a new New York law set to take effect on Nov. 24. The law will "allow sexual assault victims to sue regardless of how old their allegations are," ABC News summarizes.
Kaplan also said last week it "would make no sense" to further delay Trump's deposition in the defamation case just because it might be used in Carroll's future complaint. The claims in both suits are connected, he said.
But "the defamation lawsuit may go away on its own," ABC News posits. The president's team has pushed to substitute the Justice Department as the defendant in the case, since Trump was a federal employee at the time he denied Carroll's allegations. The government cannot be sued for defamation, which would therefore end the lawsuit.
A federal appeals court recently ruled that Trump was in fact an employee of the federal government at the time, but has asked a Washington, D.C., appeals court to weigh in, as well, ABC News continues.