Judge denies Trump request to delay E. Jean Carroll rape defamation

A judge on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump‘s to delay answering questions under oath next week in a federal lawsuit accusing him of defaming a writer when he claimed she lied and was motivated by money when she said he raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis Kaplan also denied Trump’s request to substitute the U.S. government into the case as a defendant, replacing him, on the grounds that the alleged defamation of author E. Jean Carroll occurred when he was president.

Kaplan called that request “a second bite at that apple.” He noted that he previously denied a Justice Department motion to substitute Trump as a defendant on the same grounds.

If the government was substituted for Trump in the lawsuit, it would effectively kill Carroll’s case because the government would then invoke the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which protects it from being sued without consent.

Kaplan’s ruling in Manhattan federal court sets the stage for Trump to be deposed by Carroll’s attorneys on Oct. 19., even as a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., weighs questions that could determine whether her lawsuit can be allowed to proceed.

Carroll is scheduled to be deposed on Friday. In a 2019 New York magazine article, she wrote that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Trump has denied each accusation.

Wednesday’s ruling also raises the possibility that the defamation case could go to trial in February as currently scheduled while awaiting a ruling in the appeals court.

A federal appeals court in New York last month reversed Kaplan’s earlier ruling that said that Trump was not acting as an “employee” of the U.S. government when he denied Carroll’s allegation. Trump also accused her of making up the rape claim in order to sell a book she wrote, and for political reasons.

Trump’s lawyers then unsuccessfully argued to Kaplan that the government was automatically substituted into the case as the defendant.

The New York appeals court also asked its sister appeals court in Washington to determine whether Trump made the statement about Carroll within the scope of his employment, as defined under local District of Columbia law. The D.C. appeals court has yet to rule on that issue.

Kaplan said in Wednesday’s ruling that Trump has not shown a required “strong likelihood of success” in that appellate process to warrant further delays in Carroll’s lawsuit, which has been pending since 2019. The judge said that further delaying the case would “cause substantial injury” to Carroll.

“As the Court noted in an earlier opinion in the case, ‘defendant’s litigation tactics have had a dilatory effect, and, indeed, strongly…