Writer E. Jean Carroll will soon face former President Donald Trump in court a second time in connection to her claims of sexual misconduct and defamation, though this time, the jury will be deciding just on the question of financial penalties for Trump in connection to a second set of defamation allegations.
And federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is handling proceedings at the trial level, has denied a request from Trump to delay the trial’s start date because of claimed funeral plans in Florida for former First Lady Melania Trump’s recently deceased mother. Trump’s seemingly not obligated to attend the trial, just as he wasn’t obligated to show up for the first one — and in fact, he stayed away that time! In other words, Trump was potentially trying to use family reasons to push back the trial to ostensibly solve a problem from which he didn’t suffer, considering his most specific plans will probably only become clear in coming days.
“Mr. Trump is free to attend the trial, the funeral, or all or parts of both, as he wishes,” Kaplan wrote in his recent order.
Trump has also been falling short in attempts elsewhere in the judiciary to use claims of presidential immunity, meaning legal protections drawn from his time in office, to stop proceedings. Though Trump is currently trying to substantially extend the concept in a criminal setting, holders of the presidency do possess legally established levels of immunity in a civil context. A three-judge panel on a federal court of appeals said, however, that Trump had undercut his own argument — invalidating its potential use — by failing to raise it earlier. And Trump lost in a request for every judge on that appeals court to conduct another look, though further possibilities for appeal remained.
The new trial begins next Tuesday. Kaplan has blocked arguments directly covering whether or not Trump did, in fact, perpetrate rape against Carroll, specifically in the context of the jury’s decision-making at the first trial.
