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In a letter filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, a
lawyer for E. Jean Carroll also said Trump was "mistaken" in
arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed altogether because
the U.S. government, and not he, was the proper defendant.
Trump sought to put Carroll's case on hold on Wednesday, after
the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan left it to a
Washington, D.C., appeals court to decide whether Trump acted as
president when he branded Carroll a liar in 2019.
A determination could take months, and a ruling in Trump's favor
could end Carroll's defamation case.
"He should not be permitted to assert at the last minute that he
is entitled to avoid a deposition because it remains on appeal,"
Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote. "It could hardly be
clearer that defendant hopes to 'run out the clock' until he is
elected president again."
A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Kaplan also accused Trump of seeking an improper leg up in
pre-trial discovery, saying Carroll has turned over 30,469 pages
of documents and 19 substantive responses to questions over four
months, while Trump has produced eight documents and four
"incomplete" responses.
Carroll sued Trump in November 2019, five months after he denied
raping her in the mid-1990s in a Manhattan department store
dressing room, and said "she's not my type."
The former Elle magazine columnist still plans to sue Trump for
battery and inflicting emotional distress on Nov. 24.
On that date, Carroll and other accusers get a one-year window
to sue over alleged sexual misconduct even if the statute of
limitations expired long ago under a recently enacted New York
state law.
The case is Carroll v Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York, No. 20-07311.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie
Adler)
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