Former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll watches as Joe Tacopina, lawyer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, makes closing arguments during a civil trial where Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and of defamation, New York, May 8, 2023.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected arguments by Donald Trump that presidential immunity protected him from being sued for defamation by the writer E. Jean Carroll.
The ruling is the latest judicial rejection of claims by Trump that he is protected from either civil or criminal liability because he was president.
It comes days after Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to fast-track Trump’s appeal of a Washington, D.C., federal judge’s recent ruling that he does not have presidential immunity from criminal charges related to his attempt to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
The question of presidential immunity also is being raised in the Georgia state criminal case where Trump and other defendants are charged with crimes related to their attempt to undo his loss to President Joe Biden in that state in the 2020 election.
In the Carroll case, a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel said Trump had waived a potential presidential immunity defense by “failing to raise it” for several years in the case in Manhattan federal court, where Carroll alleges he defamed her in 2019 by claiming she had made up a claim of him raping her in the mid-1990s.
Trump was president at the time he made those statements.
“We hold that presidential immunity is waivable and that Defendant waived this defense,” the three-judge appeals panel ruled in a unanimous opinion written by Judge Jose Cabranes.
The ruling clears the way for Trump to stand trial in the civil case in January. The trial will solely deal with the question of how much Trump should pay Carroll in monetary damages, as District Court Judge Lewis…
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