A judge has rejected a request to postpone E Jean Carroll’s trial related to rape allegations against former US President Donald Trump.
The civil assault and defamation trial against former U.S. President Donald Trump will start as scheduled next week, a New York judge said, denying Trump’s request to postpone the trial.
Monday’s decision comes after Trump’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan last week to give Trump a “cooling off period” of at least four weeks until May 23 for a fair trial.
They cite “substantial biased media coverage” surrounding his recent arraignment in New York on criminal charges of falsifying business records, making him the first U.S. president to face criminal prosecution.
The criminal case is separate from the civil assault and defamation case filed in November 2022 by former Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll. She filed the lawsuit after the passage of a New York state law that allows individuals to sue accused rapists after the criminal statute of limitations expires.
In Monday’s written order, Kaplan said Carroll’s case was “completely unrelated” to New York state-level criminal proceedings.
Kaplan said there was no reason to think it would be easier to arrange a fair and impartial jury in May. He said some media reports were based on Trump’s own public statements.
“It is inappropriate for Mr. Trump to push the pre-trial advocacy and then claim that the reporting he pushed was bad for him,” Kaplan wrote.
Next week’s trial will determine whether Trump defamed Carroll’s denials of her claims that he raped her in late 1995 or early 1996. Another defamation lawsuit Carroll filed in 2019 has been put on indefinite stay by a judge.
Carroll described the incident in the June 2019 New York Magazine excerpt from her memoir, saying it happened at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
She has said Trump asked her to help buy a gift for another woman, but then “manipulated” her into a dressing room where he sexually assaulted her.
Trump responded to the allegations by saying “she’s not my type” and accused Carroll of making up the rape allegation to sell the book.
The defamation case is one of several legal woes currently facing the former president.
In the New York criminal case, he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to porn stars ahead of the 2016 election. The case says Trump committed forgery in the service of a minor crime, elevating it to a misdemeanor.
In another New York civil lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump and his family of committing fraud by overvaluing their assets to lenders and insurance companies. The false statements were allegedly provided by the Trump Organization.
In Georgia, Trump faces another criminal investigation into whether he violated state law when he pressured local election officials to “find” votes after his 2020 defeat. A decision on whether to indict Trump is expected in the coming weeks.
At the federal level, Trump faced questions after he discovered about 100 documents marked “confidential” at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after leaving the White House. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has appointed a special counsel to investigate.
Meanwhile, in December, a congressional panel referred Trump to the Justice Department for possible crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the former president.
The same special counsel in the filing case is also leading a separate investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
