Edna Leshowitz/Zuma
A federal judge on Friday shot down Donald Trump’s attempt to delay a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll, calling the former president’s appeal “frivolous.”
In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in a series of public comments after her accusation. In 2019, before that lawsuit, Carroll had filed a separate defamation suit, which is now working its way through the federal court system.
The original defamation suit has been delayed over arguments about whether Trump deserved presidential immunity since he was in office at the time the suit was filed. In June, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan found that Trump did not deserve presidential immunity and that the defamation case could move forward. Trump appealed that decision, claiming that he would suffer irreparable harm from a trial scheduled for January 15, 2024. But Kaplan appears to have grown tired of Trump’s delay tactics.
“The only purported harm Mr. Trump reasonably may claim he would suffer in this case would be having to stand trial,” he wrote. “This court certifies that the appeal itself is frivolous.”
Read the judge’s opinion here:
