On Thursday, a federal judge rejected a request to postpone the trial of former President Donald Trump this month on civil claims that he raped a woman in the mid-1990s, but agreed to a request from Trump’s attorneys to gather more evidence about who is paying the defendant’s attorney.
New revelations that a major contributor to the Democrats’ case in financing the lawsuit against Trump by columnist E. Jane Carroll has prompted attorney Alina Hababa to demand that the April 25 trial be delayed by a month.
Judge Louis A. Kaplan said he would allow Trump’s attorneys to gather more information and question Carroll for up to an hour about why she said in her October deposition that her attorneys were relying on contingency fees in the case and had not received another. Enter.
The endowment request is the second time this week that a lawyer has come forward for Trump Delay request The trial over Carroll’s allegations that Trump raped her in 1996 in an upscale Manhattan dressing room.
Earlier this week, Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina requested the one-month delay, saying the negative publicity over Trump’s arrest last week on criminal charges in a New York state court made the delay necessary.
In a letter to the judge, Tacupina alleged that since Trump first reported last month that he would be arrested, media coverage of the former president had risen 200%, and claimed that online searches related to Carroll’s cases had also increased.
“The indictment has consequently quadrupled coverage in this case, reflecting the predictable and troubling trend of viewing criminal allegations against President Trump as relevant to Ms. Carroll’s claims in this civil suit,” Tacubina wrote.
trump Denial that he raped Carroll and accused the former Elle columnist and her lawyer of having a political motive after Carroll. reveal its claims First publicly in a 2019 diary when Trump was still president.
Carroll alleges the assault took place in late 1995 or early 1996 in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman’s department store.
She wrote in her diary: “The moment the dressing-room door closed, he lunged at me and pushed me against the wall.”
In her letter to the court Thursday, Heba said Carroll’s attorneys disclosed for the first time this week that they had received funding from American Future Republic, a welfare organization funded by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn.
Heba writes that the disclosure raises important questions about Carroll’s credibility and her motives for suing Trump in November after New York state enacted a law giving victims more time to prosecute those who sexually abused them, even if it happened decades earlier.
Heba said this also gets to the heart of Trump’s defense as he has consistently called Carroll’s allegations a “hoax job” and “hoax” and questioned whether she was advancing a political agenda or being funded by a rival political party.
Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, responded in a letter to the court Thursday, asking the judge to reject Trump’s latest attempt to delay the trial.
“One thing is clear – Trump will stop at nothing to avoid a jury hearing Carroll’s allegations,” she wrote.
Kaplan said her client was preparing for trial recently when she recalled hearing that her attorneys, who were working on a contingency fee basis, had also secured funding from a nonprofit. Carroll’s lawyers then notified Trump’s lawyers, who demanded to know the source of the funding.
Meanwhile, the District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a written opinion Thursday that provides additional legal insight that the second US appeals court can use to decide whether the US can replace Trump as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit Carroll brought before it. rape suit november
The second circuit asked the D.C. court to provide insight into a statute that addresses when an employer should be responsible for the actions of its employee.
The D.C. court said it lacked the facts to recommend whether it believed the allegedly defamatory statements Trump made after Carroll’s rape allegations became public fell within the scope of his job as president.
She has attempted to clarify the law, although she notes that most of the case law on this topic concerns disputes over whether law enforcement personnel can be held personally liable.
The defamation lawsuit would eventually be dismissed if the US were replaced as defendant, and a trial might otherwise become unnecessary because the November rape lawsuit also includes a defamation lawsuit against Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump was in New York City on Thursday, where it was taken off For the second time in a different lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James alleging years of fraud by Trump, his family and the Trump Organization. Trump and his legal team were in the Manhattan district attorney’s offices for eight hours.
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