NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump answered questions below oath Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, {a magazine} columnist who says the Republican raped her within the mid-Nineteen Nineties in a division retailer dressing room.
The deposition gave Carroll’s legal professionals an opportunity to interrogate Trump concerning the assault allegations in addition to statements he made in 2019 when she informed her story publicly for the primary time.
Particulars on how the deposition went weren’t instantly disclosed.
“We’re happy that on behalf of our consumer, E. Jean Carroll, we had been capable of take Donald Trump’s deposition at the moment. We aren’t capable of remark additional,” mentioned a spokesperson for the legislation agency representing her, Kaplan Hecker & Fink.
Trump has mentioned Carroll’s rape allegation is “a hoax and a lie.”
His authorized workforce labored for years to delay his deposition within the lawsuit, which was filed when he was nonetheless president. A federal decide final week rejected Trump’s request for an additional delay, saying he couldn’t “run the clock out on plaintiff’s try to achieve a treatment for what allegedly was a critical unsuitable.”
Carroll was to have been questioned by Trump’s legal professionals final Friday. Neither her attorneys and nor Trump’s have responded to questions on how that deposition went.
Something Trump mentioned throughout his deposition might probably be used as proof in an upcoming civil trial. He hasn’t confronted any legal expenses associated to Carroll’s allegations and any prosecution is unlikely. The deadline for legal expenses over sexual assaults that occurred within the Nineteen Nineties has lengthy expired.
Related authorized deadlines additionally utilized to civil lawsuits over sexual assault. Consequently, Carroll selected to sue Trump for defamation over feedback he made in 2019 when he denied any wrongdoing. She maintains his denials and assaults on her credibility and character broken her repute.
Nonetheless, New York lawmakers lately gave survivors of sexual violence a one-year window to sue their attackers over outdated assaults. Carroll’s lawyer has informed the court docket she intends to file such a swimsuit in opposition to Trump after that window opens in late November.
Based on Carroll’s account, she ran into Trump as the 2 had been buying on the Bergdorf Goodman retailer throughout Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower. On the time, Carroll was on tv because the host of an recommendation program, “Ask E. Jean.”
She mentioned the 2 engaged in pleasant banter as she tried to assist him pick a present. However once they had been briefly alone in a dressing room, she mentioned he pulled down her tights and raped her.
In a latest assertion, Trump referred to as that story “an entire con job.”
“I don’t know this girl, don’t know who she is, aside from it appears she acquired an image of me a few years in the past, along with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a star charity occasion,” Trump mentioned.