A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has denied the latest request from former President Donald Trump’s legal team to postpone the trial in the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. In a strongly worded opinion issued on Friday, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan labeled the request as “frivolous.”
The defamation lawsuit was initiated by E. Jean Carroll in response to Trump’s denial of her accusation that he sexually assaulted her in a New York department store back in the 1990s. Trump’s legal team had sought to delay the trial while they appealed a ruling issued by Kaplan in December. The ruling rejected their plea for a summary judgment to dismiss the case, arguing that Trump’s 2019 remarks about Carroll were protected under “absolute presidential immunity.”
Carroll’s complaint alleges that Trump’s denial of her accusation was false and made with reckless disregard for the truth. Earlier this year, a New York civil jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages, holding Trump accountable for sexual assault and defamation related to the incident.
In his recent ruling, Judge Kaplan dismissed Trump’s attempt to delay the trial, stating that his legal team had failed to provide sufficient grounds for the court to believe that their appeal for presidential immunity was likely to succeed. The judge highlighted that Trump’s multiple requests for delays appeared to be an attempt to unnecessarily prolong the case’s resolution without a strong basis for doing so.