Second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial against Trump set for January

A federal judge on Thursday set E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against former President Donald Trump for early next year.

In a brief scheduling order, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the civil trial will commence on Jan. 15.

Kaplan had granted Carroll’s motion to file an amended complaint Tuesday in the still-pending case against Trump seeking new damages of at least $10 million, based in part on comments he made at a CNN town hall last month.

Lawyers for Carroll, a writer, highlighted a string of comments Trump made at the CNN event, among them that he had never met or seen Carroll and that her allegations were fabricated.

“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump, who launched his 2024 presidential bid in November, said in the CNN appearance, while also referring to Carroll’s claims as “fake” and “made up,” her lawyers said.

Carroll’s attorneys wrote in the motion seeking the amended complaint that Trump “doubled down on his prior defamatory statements” at the town hall.

Trump’s team had sought to block the delayed defamation suit.

Trump attorney Alina Habba said Tuesday her team didn’t think Carroll should have been allowed to amend the defamation complaint: “We maintain that she should not be permitted to retroactively change her legal theory, at the eleventh hour, to avoid the consequences of an adverse finding against her.”

The pending defamation case dates to 2019, when Carroll publicly accused Trump, then the president, of having raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store near his Fifth Avenue home in New York City in 1995 or 1996.

She had sued Trump on allegations that he defamed her when he was president by calling her claims a “hoax” and a “con job.”

A jury in New York found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defamation last month in a separate case she filed against him. But that jury did not find that the evidence showed Trump raped her.

The defamation case is one in a series of coming trials involving Trump.

The New York attorney general’s $250 million lawsuit accusing Trump of attempting to inflate his personal net worth to attract favorable loan agreements is scheduled to go to trial in October. Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.”

In March, the Manhattan district attorney’s hush money case, which charges that Trump falsified business records related to his alleged role in making hush-money payments to two women before the 2016 election, is scheduled to go to trial in March. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Dareh Gregorian contributed.