Judge Tosses Trump’s Defamation Claim Against E. Jean Carroll

A federal judge in New York tossed Donald Trump‘s defamation countersuit against writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges the former president raped her during the mid-1990s at a Manhattan department store, in a ruling on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan granted Carroll’s motion to dismiss Trump’s claim raising issues with Carroll saying in a May interview that she thought “oh yes he did” after a CNN anchor asked what was going on in her head when the jury that had just found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation did not find him liable for rape.

For the purposes of the case at hand, Carroll’s statements were “substantially true,” Kaplan wrote, agreeing with an argument made by Carroll’s legal team. The jury made an “implicit determination” that Trump raped Carroll with his fingers with its finding on the “sexual abuse question,” added the judge, who noted that New York penal law espouses the narrow view that such a crime is committed with forcible penetration of the vagina by a penis.

Trump, who has long denied Carroll’s allegations that he raped her, appealed the jury’s verdict in which he was ordered to pay $5 million in damages. His legal team filed the counterclaim in June, which said Carroll “disregarded the jury’s finding that Counterclaimant did not rape her,” as part of a separate defamation lawsuit brought by the writer in 2019 and set to go to trial in January.

“We are pleased that the Court dismissed Donald Trump’s counterclaim,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement reported by CNN. “That means that the January 15th jury trial will be limited to a narrow set of issues and shouldn’t take very long to complete. E. Jean Carroll looks forward to obtaining additional compensatory and punitive damages based on the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made in 2019.”

One of Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba, said, “We strongly disagree with the flawed decision and will be filing an appeal shortly.”

Trump is running a 2024 campaign for a second term in the White House. In addition to civil litigation, he faces multiple indictments on the state and federal levels. The former president broadly denies any wrongdoing, claiming he is the target of a “witch hunt.”

In a separate order, as reported by CBS News last week, Kaplan ruled that Carroll’s team can give Trump’s deposition in their legal battle to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading the Trump hush-money criminal case related to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

DeSantis Spars With Reporter When Asked If Trump Lost 2020 Election

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis sparred with a reporter in an interview that aired on Monday when asked if former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

NBC News reporter Dasha Burns asked the Florida governor: “Yes or no, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”

“Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20th every four years is the winner,” DeSantis responded.

The video then shows a cut and picks up with Burns saying: “Ok, but respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question and if you can’t give a yes or no on whether Trump lost then how…”

“No, of course he lost,” DeSantis said. “Joe Biden’s the president.”

“But the issue is, I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election,” he continued.

The video then cuts again and picks up with DeSantis saying: “So, I don’t think it was a good run election. But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening and you shouldn’t have provided all the money to fund the mail-in ballots.”

NBC News said that portions of the interview would air throughout the day.

WATCH:

Exclusive: Florida Gov. DeSantis rejects former President Trump's claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

"Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner," DeSantis said in a @NBCNews interview. https://t.co/Sv8j1Xtuyi pic.twitter.com/Eo3cvYHnYt

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 7, 2023

During an event in Iowa late last week, DeSantis was asked by reporters about his view on the 2020 presidential election.

“It was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want to, but that’s different than saying Maduro stole votes or something like that,” he said. “Those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated.”

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DeSantis later signaled that as president, he would pardon Trump in the two federal criminal cases in which he has been indicted.

“I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the country to have a former president that’s almost 80 years old go to prison,” he said. “And just like Ford pardoned Nixon, sometimes you’ve got to put this stuff behind you, and we need to start focusing on things having to do with the country’s future. This election needs to be about Jan. 20, 2025, not Jan. 6, 2021.”

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