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Donald Trump will likely have to make a huge payment in the second defamation case brought by retired journalist E. Jean Carroll, a legal expert said.
On Thursday, an appeal court refused to delay the case, which is scheduled to start on January 16.
In a jury trial in May, the former president was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The jury found that Trump sexually assaulted the former Elle writer in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the 1990s and then defamed her character in 2022 by claiming the assault never happened because Carroll "wasn't my type."
She is suing again for comments he made in 2019, when she first launched her sexual assault claim against him. In the 2019 comments, Trump claimed that Carroll was "trying to sell a new book" and suggested she might be a Democratic operative.
"The world should know what's really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations," Trump said.
Carroll's second defamation case is based on those comments.
In July, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan refused Trump's request for a new trial in the Carroll case.
On September 6, Kaplan ruled that Trump had defamed Carroll with the 2019 comments and the January 15 jury trial will only be deciding how much money Trump will have to pay Carroll.
Bryan M. Sullivan, who is Hunter Biden's attorney and a founding partner at Los Angeles-based Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae, told Newsweek that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely not be able to save Trump from Carroll's lawsuit.
"E. Jean Carroll has a very strong case against Trump since it comes on the heels of a jury finding him liable, and will likely lead to large punitive damages," Sullivan said.
He added that it is unlikely Trump could claim presidential immunity.
"There is only so much delaying Trump's lawyers can attempt, and it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will do anything to help Trump in this civil case," Sullivan said.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's attorney by email for comment on Friday.
On December 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York denied Trump's request to delay the second Carroll case until the U.S. Supreme Court considers his immunity claim.
It comes two weeks after the Court of Appeals ruled that Trump does not have immunity from Carroll's lawsuit.
Carroll alleged the former president raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, a claim Trump has repeatedly denied.
Carroll's lawyers are already using Trump's own words to line up a large defamation payment.
On December 21, Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote to the judge for the upcoming defamation trial to designate quotes from Trump's New York fraud trial that Kaplan intends to use. Designation is used to mark quotes for later use in a court case.
In his court filing, Kaplan said that Trump testified in the fraud deposition "about his wealth, an issue relevant to the appropriate measure of punitive damages in this case."
Separate from the Carroll case, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump for overvaluing his properties to obtain bank loans. A major part of Trump's defense has been that his properties were undervalued, not overvalued, and that he is far wealthier than it appears on in his financial statements.
Kaplan wants to show this evidence of Trump's wealth to the jury before they decide how much Trump must pay Carroll.
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About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more