A federal district court has reversed an earlier ruling to release key excerpts of former President Donald Trump‘s deposition in a lawsuit filed by author E. Jean Carroll, who has alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in 2019, but she later added a battery charge in November 2022 after a law passed that removed the statute of limitations for some past sexual offenses.
TRUMP ASKS FEDERAL COURT TO TOSS LAWSUIT FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT ACCUSER
The order from Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said the court would unseal “all previously redacted portions” of the document, which included Carroll’s and Trump’s depositions. Carroll’s deposition was made public in December 2022, while Trump’s was fully redacted.
However, Kaplan later reversed the order without comment after Trump’s legal team reportedly persuaded him that the original instructions to fight the unsealing of the deposition were unclear, according to Law & Crime News.
Kaplan’s original ruling was made after Trump’s lawyers reportedly “made no effort to justify the continued sealing” of Trump’s deposition. Trump recorded the deposition on video on Oct. 19, 2022, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, according to court filings.
In a letter to the judge Monday, Trump’s lawyers attempted to prevent the unsealing of the deposition by arguing the burden was on Carroll’s lawyers to “explain why unsealing of the confidential deposition transcript was necessary.”
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Trump’s lawyers have attempted to throw out the claims against the former president, calling them “baseless and legally defective” while also questioning the constitutionality of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed Carroll to bring the battery claims against him. The legality questions stem from the due process protections insured to the accused under the U.S. Constitution.
Carroll alleged that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied the accusations against him.
