Trump Trial In Sexual Assault Case Scheduled To Move Forward

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Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan has set a date for the trial on claims from writer E. Jean Carroll that the now ex-president sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Now, it’ll start April 25.

“Trial will commence on April 25, 2023,” the judge said on Tuesday. “The Court will resolve the question whether to consolidate or jointly try Carroll I with this case at a later date.” The other case from Carroll concerned claims of defamation originating with responses Trump originally provided to her accounts of what happened while still president. Court disputes over potential legal protections for Trump’s statements related to his presidential role evidently remain unresolved — although Carroll separately focused on additional allegedly defamatory statements from Trump in her follow-up case that he posted when no longer president on his knock-off social media site Truth Social. In a deposition amid Carroll’s litigation that was conducted before the claims directly covering the sexual assault allegations in the second case were filed, Trump confirmed he composed and posted those disputed remarks.

According to reporter Adam Klasfeld, the Trump team was seeking a somewhat longer delay for the trial. Alina Habba, who was Trump’s lawyer on a failed case in Florida challenging the talk of ties between the ex-president’s camp and Russia that resulted in nearly $1 million in financial penalties imposed on Trump and Habba, some of which would be going to Hillary Clinton, is staying on the Carroll case in Trump’s corner, with the more recent addition to the ex-president’s team of lawyer Joe Tacopina. Tacopina’s career includes legal representation of Fox News host Sean Hannity and a Capitol rioter — and in the latter case, he actually directly confronted the ex-president’s role in inciting what turned out to be deadly violence. In court proceedings this week, Tacopina sought to assuage any concerns about matters devolving into personal jabs. “This is not a personal attack,” he said at one point in a discussion of Carroll’s legal representation. “We respect everyone at that table by the way.”

At issue remains a potential examination by a third-party expert of claims from Carroll of emotional impacts she has suffered. Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll who has represented her throughout these disputes, was open to the idea, although she indicated there were remaining questions about what that course of action might actually mean for Carroll.

It appears that the judge’s order establishing the trial date in late April also deals with deadlines for a portion of the discovery process ahead of trial in which those involved would handle that possibility. “All discovery of and with respect to Dr. Nace or any substitute expert in place of Dr. Nace shall be completed on or before March 14, 2023,” the judge said, also laying out a series of deadlines for motions from both sides related to the contents of that process of discovery. (Nace is seemingly a psychiatrist.) Ahead of trial, what is known as discovery involves both sides collecting relevant information, including through depositions and evidence.