By Aaron Miller
Donald Trump’s lawyers have lodged a motion to dismiss a defamation hearing related to a rape allegation by a journalist, arguing that it cannot legally take place in Newyork.
The U.S president’s lawyers argue that E Jean Carroll’s suit cannot go forward in a New York state court because his statements were made in Washington.
Carroll, 75, filed her lawsuit in the supreme court of New York state on Monday. She argues that Trump’s vociferous denials and characterisation of her as a money-grabbing liar have damaged her reputation and career.
In the legal suit, the respected writer states her allegation that about 23 years ago at the upscale store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Trump seized her, forced her against the wall of a dressing room and raped her. The suit notes that Carroll remained silent for more than two decades about the incident, though she says she told two close friends at the time.
Trump’s lawyer argues that New York law does not allow for defamation suits over statements made elsewhere, except in circumstances Carroll’s case does not meet, Trump lawyer said.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said it was “obviously ridiculous” to argue Trump cannot be sued in New York, his longtime hometown, though the president said in October he plans to change his residency to Florida after leaving the White House. Kaplan called Friday’s filing “a transparent effort to avoid discovery at all costs in a case involving a sexual assault”, referring to the pretrial evidence-gathering process called discovery. A judge has set time frames for various steps.
RAPE ALLEGATION
The allegation all began in a New York magazine piece and a book Carroll later wrote , in which she accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-90s, after a chance meeting morphed into shopping for lingerie for the real estate mogul to give an unidentified woman.
Carroll claims to have run into Donald Trump, whom she had met a few years earlier, in Bergdorf Goodman, the Manhattan department store in late 1995 or early 1996. She claims the pair bantered about what gift Trump should buy a female friend. After Lingerie was mentioned as a suggestion, Trump is said to have picked up a see-through bodysuit which he told her to put on.
When she playfully suggested that he try it on, the assault allegedly happened when they both entered a dressing room. Carroll’s defamation suit is over the president’s condemnation of her claim as fake news. Last June, June Carroll said he was “totally lying” and the accusation was “fake news”. He called her “not my type”.
He also said he had never met her, but a 1987 photo shows the two and their then-spouses at a social event. He dismissed it, saying he was just “standing with my coat on in a line”.