A federal judge has denied Donald Trump's request to delay his scheduled deposition in a case brought against him by the noted writer E. Jean Carroll, saying the former president "should not be permitted to run the clock out."
Trump is being sued for defamation by Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in the dressing room of a top Manhattan department store.
"This is a defamation action against Donald J. Trump. The question whether Mr. Trump defamed the plaintiff depends largely upon whether Mr. Trump, as plaintiff claims, raped her in a department store fitting room," Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan writes.
"The matter is before the Court on a motion by Mr. Trump to substitute the United States for him as the defendant and to stay the action. A previous motion by the United States to substitute itself for Mr. Trump was denied, so this is a second bite at that apple," Kaplan adds.
The Daily Beast adds that the "famed advice columnist alleged that Trump had harmed her reputation after he denied the attack, claiming the rape was impossible because she wasn’t his 'type.' Carroll’s first lawsuit against the former president was pushed from state court to federal court, and is still pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit."
"As this Court previously has observed," Kaplan continued, "Mr. Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it."
"Among the actions with this effect was this. After litigating the case in the state court for almost a year without any suggestion that the government of the United States had anything whatever to do with it, Mr. Trump" reportedly instructed William Barr, then [Mr. Trump's appointee as] Attorney General, to cause the United States to intervene and remove the case to this Court under the Westfall Act.'"
Judge Kaplan goes on to note that Trump "has conducted extensive discovery on the plaintiff, yet produced virtually none himself."
The judge does not stop there.
"Given his conduct so far in this case, Mr. Trump's position regarding the burdens of discovery is inexcusable."
Trump, he adds, "should not be permitted to run the clock out on on plaintiff's attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong."
Bloomberg News' Zoe Tillman posted the judge's order.
George Conway, the attorney who Trump considered to be his Solicitor General but pulled his name from consideration before the then-president had decided, commented on Judge Kaplan's ruling.
"Wow," Conway writes. "Judge Kaplan really smoked Trump and his counsel here."