A federal judge has rejected Donald Trump‘s request to dismiss the original lawsuit filed against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, which accused him of defaming her in response to her rape accusations, Reuters reported.
Trump’s lawyers argued that he was entitled to absolute presidential immunity, that his defamatory statements were just a matter of opinion, and that Carroll “consented” to his statements by waiting decades to go public.
Trump countersued Carroll on Tuesday, saying she defamed him in a CNN interview one day after a Manhattan jury ordered him on May 9 to pay the former Elle magazine columnist $5 million for defamation and sexual abuse in a separate lawsuit.
Carroll is seeking at least $10 million in damages in her original lawsuit and the trial is scheduled to start Jan. 15, 2024.
The legal battle between the two began when Carroll published an excerpt from her memoir in 2019, where she said he attacked her in a dressing room in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
