Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan has rejected a push from Donald Trump for a delay by a month in when his sexual assault trial will be starting.
The trial will not be criminal in nature and instead originates with civil claims brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who says that the now former president sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Predictably, Trump has antagonistically denied the accusations, although his own publicly known conduct bolsters the idea of his general animosity towards women, which is relevant here. Trump’s team pushed for a delay after information emerged that third-party funding had actually been made available in support of Carroll’s legal efforts, despite the writer previously attesting no such funding was involved — although it’s unclear Carroll was necessarily lying, which would depend on what she actually knew about the arrangement. Her legal representation in this case has claimed she “never met and has never been party to any communications” with individuals involved with a nonprofit organization at issue.
In conjunction with a proposed delay, Trump’s team had sought to reexamine the question of funding, although as Kaplan noted, that matter doesn’t directly impact the substance of the case. The judge acknowledged that whatever Carroll herself knew compared with her past comments in her own deposition could generally impact her credibility and is allowing an additional, limited deposition of the writer conducted by the Trump team that is limited to an hour, although he refused to make more sweeping judgments, including via agreeing with instructing an adverse inference on Carroll’s credibility to jurors.
Trump claimed Carroll intentionally defied obligations she had during the discovery process, which is a period before trial in which involved parties collect relevant information, but it’s just unclear such is actually true. Drawing an adverse inference — and instructing a jury to take such a thing — basically means weighing whatever is at issue against the subject of the dispute, who in this matter is Carroll.
Kaplan also left the matter open of whether the dispute over funding could be raised at trial at all. Trial is scheduled to begin later this month, with Carroll having filed civil claims directly covering the alleged assault following her earlier claims of defamation in response to Trump’s reaction to her revelations.
This is the order: pic.twitter.com/P2iBBbczrH
— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) April 14, 2023
