Donald Trump is seeking a four-week delay to a civil trial over his alleged rape of New York author E. Jean Carroll, citing a “deluge” of publicity from his recent unrelated criminal indictment.
(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump is seeking a four-week delay to a civil trial over his alleged rape of New York author E. Jean Carroll, citing a “deluge” of publicity from his recent unrelated criminal indictment.
A “cooling off” period is necessary for Trump to get a fair trial following his “unprecedented indictment and arraignment” on April 4, his lawyer Joseph Tacopina said in a letter late Tuesday to the judge overseeing Carroll’s case. The five- to seven-day trial is set to start April 25 in federal court in Manhattan.
“Holding the trial of this case a mere three weeks after these historic events will guarantee that many, if not most, prospective jurors will have the criminal allegations top of mind,” Tacopina said.
‘Ringing in Their Ears’
Trump pleaded not guilty on April 4 in New York state court to 34 felony counts of falsifying documents in connection with hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and a Playboy model over sexual encounters they say they had with him, which he denies.
Read More: Trump Pleads Not Guilty in NY Case Tying Hush Money to Election
Jurors in the Carroll case will still have the alleged encounters “ringing in their ears” if the trial goes ahead as planned, Tacopina said.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan rejected the request as “perverse” in a response filed filed Wednesday, saying Trump “has done everything in his power to intensify such coverage,” including making threats and appearing on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson show Tuesday. Jury selection will weed out jurors whose opinions are too strong, she said.
“Waiting an additional four weeks will do nothing to ‘cool’ the unavoidable press and security concerns that will attend this trial — concerns that Your Honor has taken substantial measures to address,” Kaplan said. The judge had ruled earlier that members of the jury will be anonymous to protect them.
The lawyer also said Trump’s filing exaggerated the amount of public interest in his indictment by focusing only on the result of a Google search. Kaplan said using Google Trends to show the frequency of searches was more illuminating.
“Searches for ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Donald Trump Indictment very briefly spiked when the indictment was announced and when Trump was arraigned,” Kaplan said. “But interest in those topics has already fallen by over 85% and is now roughly even with pre-indictment levels.”
Trump has denied wrongdoing in both the criminal and civil cases and said they are part of a broader political effort to take him down.
Carroll Cases
Carroll, a former advice columnist with Elle magazine, went public in 2019 with her claim that Trump raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan more than two decades ago. The suit going to trial was filed last year under a new New York law that temporarily lifts the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims even if they’re decades old.
Read More: Trump’s Protest Calls Lead to Anonymous Jury in Rape Trial
Carroll’s earlier suit against Trump — a defamation complaint filed in 2019 after he called her a liar from the White House — is currently stalled on appeal. Trump is seeking to have that case tossed out, citing protections he says he had as an employee of the federal government at the time she sued.
The case is Carroll v. Trump, 22-cv-10016, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Updates with response filed by Carroll’s lawyer in sixth paragraph.)
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