Trump must testify in defamation case, judge rules

Former U.S. President Donald Trump will have to testify next week in a defamation case brought by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to postpone the scheduled testimony. Testimony is now scheduled for October 19.

The decision was brought up by E. Jean Carroll, a longtime consulting columnist for Elle magazine, who said Mr. Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store locker room.

Mr Trump has denied this. Ms Carroll’s testimony is scheduled for Friday.

Mr Trump’s legal team has tried various tactics to delay the case and prevent him from being questioned by Ms Carroll’s lawyers, but Mr Kaplan wrote that it was time to move forward.

“Defendants should not be allowed time-out for plaintiffs trying to obtain remedy for alleged serious wrongs,” he wrote.

Ms Carroll claims Mr Trump damaged her reputation when he denied raping her in 2019.

His legal team has been trying to put the case to rest, arguing that he was simply doing his job as president by denying the allegations.

This is a key question because the US government would be a defendant in the case if Mr Trump acted within his responsibilities as a federal employee.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said in a split ruling last month that Mr Trump was a federal employee when he commented on Ms Carroll’s claims, but asked another court in Washington to decide whether his public statement happened within his scope of employment.

Mr. Kaplan said Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to delay gathering evidence in the case.

“Mr. Trump’s position on finding responsibility is inexcusable given his conduct to date in this case,” he wrote.

“As this court has previously observed, Mr. Trump has been litigating this case since 2019, and the effect may have been to delay it.”