Trump Granted Delay in Defamation Case Amid Legal Battles

(Left) President Donald Trump comes out of the Oval Office from the White House on Sept. 16, 2019. (Right) E. Jean Carroll leaves following her trial at Manhattan Federal Court in New York on May 8, 2023. Mandel Ngan, Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump has been granted a one-week delay to testify at a New York defamation trial, where he could potentially be forced to pay millions of dollars in damages.

The trial stems from defamatory comments that the judge in the case said President Trump made about columnist E. Jean Carroll in 2019 and in May 2023, a day after a jury found that the former president sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll in the 1990s and defamed her in his 2022 statements. President Trump is appealing the verdict.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued the order on Jan. 14, permitting President Trump to testify on Jan. 22, even if the trial concludes by Jan. 18.

Judge Kaplan had initially denied President Trump’s request to postpone the trial for a week to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. The judge cited potential disruptions and inconveniences to jurors, lawyers, court staff, and security, emphasizing that the trial date had been communicated seven months earlier.

The judge said in the order that the court had learned that, while seeking a trial delay, President Trump had scheduled a campaign appearance in New Hampshire on Jan. 17.

The former president said on Jan. 11 that he would attend the defamation trial and wanted to do the same for all of his upcoming trials, which he said have become part of his campaign.

“Yeah, I’m going to go to it, and I’m going to explain I don’t know who ... she is,” he said at the Trump Building in New York. The former president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Former President Donald Trump leaves the courtroom during a break in the civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization at the New York State Supreme Court in New York, on Dec. 7, 2023. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

Lawsuit Background

The trial, set to start on Jan. 16, will involve a jury hearing evidence related to $10 million in compensatory damages and additional punitive damages sought by Ms. Carroll’s attorneys.

This legal saga stems from a defamation lawsuit Ms. Carroll filed over allegedly defamatory comments President Trump made about her in 2019 when she first publicly accused him of sexual assault.

On May 9, 2023, Ms. Carroll was awarded $5 million in her second defamation lawsuit: about $3 million for a defamation charge and about $2 million for a civil battery charge.

The defamation charge was related to a statement President Trump made on Truth Social in October 2022.

A day after the verdict—on May 10—President Trump appeared at a town hall event on CNN, where he called Carroll a “whack job” and said her claims against him were fake.

Subsequently, Ms. Carroll’s attorneys asked to amend her pending defamation lawsuit from November 2019 so she could seek further punitive damages against the former president after he made comments about her at the televised town hall event.

Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves a Manhattan courthouse after a jury found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s on May 9, 2023. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Lawyers for President Trump, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, appealed the May 2023 decision, asking the judge to lower the jury award for damages to less than $1 million or order a new trial.

In 2019, Ms. Carroll accused President Trump of having raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996.

‘Futile’ Motion

In the motion to amend, lawyers for Ms. Carroll accused President Trump of having “doubled down” on derogatory remarks about her.

“Trump’s defamatory statements post-verdict show the depth of his malice toward Carroll since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite,” the lawyers wrote in the complaint, filed on May 22, 2023.

“This conduct supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”

In response, lawyers for President Trump contended in a June 5, 2023, memorandum that Ms. Carroll’s motion was “futile” since his comments made at the CNN town hall were “safeguarded by the fair reporting privilege, which consequently prevents them from being used as a foundation to enhance the punitive damages sought by [Carroll] in this case.”

President Trump’s attorneys argued that he was addressing a specific question about the jury’s May 9, 2023, decision in Ms. Carroll’s second defamation case against him.

The former president’s legal team said that he didn’t deny or misrepresent the jury’s verdict but expressed his disagreement with the findings and reiterated his long-held position that the alleged event never occurred.

They argued that the average listener would understand that President Trump’s comments were in response to and related to Ms. Carroll’s second defamation case.

It comes as President Trump faces numerous legal battles in Georgia, Florida, and another in New York.

While maintaining his innocence, President Trump has claimed that the various legal troubles were orchestrated by his political rivals for election interference.

President Trump is the front-runner by far for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.