Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday for a 90-day delay of trial proceedings in a defamation lawsuit against him by columnist E. Jean Carroll.
The legal move, aimed at safeguarding his presidential immunity defense, comes after the same Manhattan court rejected this defense on Dec. 14, sending the case back to the lower court to go ahead with a trial set for next month.
In Thursday’s filing, President Trump’s legal team argued that the requested stay of the trial is essential to allow the former president sufficient time to consider his options for further appeal, including the possibility of taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The filing argues that forcing President Trump to stand trial in the absence of a final determination “as to whether his presidential immunity defense is viable” would be a violation of established legal norms.
This “would be the ‘quintessential form of prejudice’ and would deprive the immunity of its intended effect,” the lawyers argued.
They also argued that lower courts typically lack jurisdiction “throughout the pendency of an immunity-related appeal.”
They also contend that failing to stay the proceedings would violate President Trump’s constitutional rights, with respect to its chances of getting in the way of his 2024 campaign.
“For example, given the ongoing harm arising from foreclosing President Trump’s access to this important defense, these motions implicate the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the hundreds of millions of Americans who wish to hear his campaign advocacy—as the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election—unencumbered by the need to prepare for and attend a January 2024 trial in the district court, in which he is wrongly being denied access to a crucial and meritorious defense,” the lawyers wrote.
Thursday’s filing points to special counsel Jack Smith’s filing last week with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the defense’s presidential immunity appeal arising from the Washington, D.C. election case as demonstrating the significance of these issues.
Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to urgently resolve the question of presidential immunity, to the objection of President Trump’s lawyers, who urged the court not to fast-track the case.
Presidential Immunity
This defamation case would mark the second presidential immunity-related matter to escalate to the nation’s highest court if lawyers for the former president take it there.“There is little doubt that the Supreme Court views presidential immunity as indispensable,” the lawyers wrote.
On Dec. 14, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Trump had effectively waived an immunity defense by not raising it when Ms. Carroll filed in 2019.
“First, Defendant unduly delayed in raising presidential immunity as a defense,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “Three years passed between Defendant’s answer and his request for leave to amend his answer. A three-year delay is more than enough, under our precedents, to qualify as ‘undue.’”
President Trump’s lawyer, Ms. Habba, called the ruling “fundamentally flawed,” while Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said the decision means that the case can move forward with a trial.
The appeals court fast-tracked the case ahead of the January trial, which will focus on determining damages for Ms. Carroll.
This is the first of two civil lawsuits Ms. Carroll has brought against President Trump. On May 9, she won $5 million in her second lawsuit and then amended her first lawsuit, seeking $10 million in compensatory damages after a grand jury found him liable for sexual abuse but not rape.
She sued the former president for comments he made in 2019 denying her allegations and alleging they were motivated by money.
In 2019, Ms. Carroll said President Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a department store in the mid-1990s.
President Trump denied that he had ever “met her or touched her” in a lengthy social media post, in which he asserted that her stories were false and “a total scam” that was “part of the Democrats playbook to tarnish my name and person.” A countersuit he filed against Ms. Carroll was thrown out in August.
The original 2019 defamation lawsuit is still awaiting resolution. A trial is set for Jan. 16, 2024, pending the outcome of President Trump’s appeal for a stay.
