Donald Trump dismissed from his defamation action against a woman who accuses him of rape

JUSTICE Trump, 77, was found responsible on May 9 by a New York civil court jury for the “sexual assault” over 27 years ago by author E. Jean Carroll

Donald Trump. — Alex Brandon/AP/SIPA

A federal judge in New York has dismissed Monday a legal action by Donald Trump who considers himself defamed by a former press columnist who for years has accused the former US president of having raped her in 1996. Trump, 77, who hopes to win back the White House in 2024, had been judged charged on May 9 by a New York civil court jury with “sexual assault”, not “rape”, more than 27 years ago. ;author E. Jean Carroll, à whom he must pay five million dollars in damages.

This 79-year-old woman had deposited two weeks after the trial a new libel suit for remarks that Trump had made on CNN the day after the verdict: “She is crazy,” the favorite for the Republican presidential primary of November 2024. It’s part of this new move by Carroll that Trump brought counter-arguments to; a story he says “made up from scratch”, calling for a new civil trial.

Also on CNN in May, the magazine’s former columnist < em>She had notably affirmed; “Oh yes he did, he did,” that she had been victim of “sexual assault” but not “rape”.

“True on substance”

However, according to an order Monday from Manhattan federal civil court judge Lewis Kaplan, Carroll’s accusations that Trump raped her in a dressing room in the lingerie department of the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in the spring of 1996 are “substantively true”. The jury, on May 9, had recognized that Donald Trump had, on that day in 1996, penetrated it. with a finger but not with his penis, a crime which would have constituted rape under the law New York.

But for Judge Kaplan, “in fact, these two acts constitute “rape” in common parlance, according to the definition of certain dictionaries, in the federal and other state criminal law” Americans and to abroad. The new complaint at the end of May from Carroll had been paid in the context of the first civil lawsuits brought in November 2019, there again for defamation, against the former president.

This action of 2019 had been delayed by procedural battles, including over whether Donald Trump enjoyed immunity; presidential election in 2019, when he was in the White House (2017-2021).