The writer who is suing Donald Trump for defamation after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s has accused him of obstruction and trying to avoid a scheduled deposition as he tries to delay the case indefinitely .
In a letter filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday, an attorney for E Jean Carroll also said Trump was “mistaken” in saying the lawsuit should be dismissed outright because the US government, not him. , was the good defendant.
Trump sought to stay the Carroll case on Wednesday, after the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan left it to a Washington DC appeals court to decide whether Trump acted as president when he called Carroll a liar in 2019.
A decision could take months, and a decision in Trump’s favor could end Carroll’s defamation case.
“He should not be allowed to say at the last minute that he has the right to avoid a deposition because it remains on appeal,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote. “It could hardly be clearer that the defendant hopes to ‘run out of time’ until he is elected president again.”
A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kaplan also accused Trump of seeking an improper lead in pre-trial discovery, saying Carroll turned over 30,469 pages of documents and 19 substantive answers to questions over four months, while Trump produced eight documents. and four “incomplete” responses.
Carroll sued Trump in November 2019, five months after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store and said “she’s not my type.”
The former Elle magazine columnist still plans to sue Trump for assault and battery and emotional distress inflicted on Nov. 24.
On that date, Carroll and other accusers have a year to file a lawsuit over alleged sexual misconduct, even though the statute of limitations expired long ago under a recently enacted law. in New York State.
