In a civil defamation lawsuit brought by New York advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her in a 2019 book, former US President Donald Trump has testified under oath.
According to the writer’s legal team, Trump was questioned by Carroll’s attorneys on Wednesday after failing to successfully postpone the deposition last week. It was unclear at first where and when the testimony took place.
“We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today. We are not able to comment further,” law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink said in a statement.
Carroll’s lawsuit “is nothing more than a political tactic like many others in the lengthy list of witch hunts against Donald Trump,” according to Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, who claimed the former commander in chief was “pleased to set the record straight today.”
Carroll published a book in 2019 that claimed Trump had sexually assaulted her in a New York department store during the 1990s, the first time she did so while he was still in office. The woman’s claims were swiftly dismissed by Trump as “a fraud and a lie,” and he claimed that he had never met her and that her actions were only intended to “get notoriety” and “sell a book.” Carroll soon after filed the libel lawsuit.
Trump had asked the US government to take his place as a defendant in the case due to the claimed defamation allegedly occurring while he was still in office, but Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected his plea last week. In order to “run the clock out on Plaintiff’s endeavor to secure a remedy for what supposedly was a major wrong,” the same court rejected a request to postpone Trump’s deposition.
Carroll has already been deposed, but neither legal side has provided any information regarding the testimony. Carroll was questioned by Trump’s attorneys last Friday. It is unknown when more information might become available because both parties in the lawsuit are free to keep their depositions private during the pretrial discovery phase if they so wish.
Regardless of the outcome of the defamation case, Carroll has vowed to sue the former president in a New York court next month under a recently passed state law which lifted the statute of limitations for rape and sexual assault allegations. Her lawyers can use the deposition provided by Trump on Wednesday as part of that separate suit.
