A date has been set for the start of former President Trump’s sexual assault and defamation trial: this coming Tuesday, April 25.
The date for the hearing follows Judge Lewis Kaplan in the Southern District of New York on Monday denying a request by Trump to delay the trial by a month.
Trump attorney Joseph Tacopina had asked for a “cooling off” period following the former President’s unprecedented indictment by a Manhattan grand jury and arraignment on 34 felony counts of business fraud related to hush money paid to at least two women ahead of the 2016 Presidential election.
Kaplan, in denying the request, called the suggestion that the coverage could preclude the selection of a fair jury “pure speculation.”
Writer E. Jean Carroll filed suit against Trump for battery under New York State’s Adult Suvivor’s Act, legislation on the same day it went into effect—Thanksgiving day.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
Carroll already had a pending lawsuit against Trump for defamation, saying his public denials and disparaging comments have damaged her reputation. She is seeking unspecified damages in her battery lawsuit, asserting that Trump caused her lasting psychological harm.
On Trump’s Truth Social site he called Carroll’s rape claim a “Hoax and a lie” in an October 2022 post, and accused her of making up the accusations to sell a book.
In the Truth Social posting, he also insisted Carroll is “not my type”—an assertion he had made during a deposition in October. However, in that same deposition Trump misidentified a photograph of Carroll as his ex-wife, Marla Maples.
Kaplan has further rejected Trump’s bid to exclude the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he brags that he as a celebrity can get away with sexually assaulting women, as well as testimony from two other women who claimed he sexually assaulted them, as well as evidence that Carroll suffered emotional harm.
