Government

Trump Taps Out, Finally Agrees To Discovery In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

It only took three years.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In November of 2019, E. Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for defamation after she accused him of sexual assault, and he called her a liar who was too ugly to rape. It is now May of 2022, and we are finally getting to the discovery phase. Because when you’re a star with the entire weight of the Justice Department behind you, they let you do it.

In a letter filed this morning in New York, Carroll’s attorneys informed the court that Trump proposed in April to restart discovery, and her client agreed. It should be noted that this was after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan blocked Trump’s effort to delay this case even longer by filing a countersuit against Carroll, a move the court described as “dilatory” and made “at least in part in bad faith.”

Indeed, the entire history of this case might be described as “dilatory” and “in bad faith.” Trump repeatedly ducked Carroll’s process server and then when he was finally served, argued that a sitting president was magically immune from civil suit, or, in the alternative, that he was a Florida Man, and beyond the jurisdiction of a New York court. After he lost that case in state court and was just about to have to submit to a cheek swab to match the DNA on the dress Carroll wore on the day of the alleged assault, Attorney General Bill Barr swooped in and rescued him by claiming that the government was the appropriate defendant under the Federal Tort Claims Act, removing the case permanently to federal court.

Judge Kaplan rejected the DOJ’s effort to substitute itself as defendant, but while the government appeals, the case appears to have finally reached the discovery stage. And his remedial lecture on the Erie doctrine for Trump’s lawyers at the February hearing on their proposed countersuit was, uh, memorable.

But it appears that the defendant has finally tapped out. The order, which was signed by Judge Kaplan this afternoon, stipulates that written discovery requests will be complete by May 27, with “requests for inspection or examination” to be completed by August 3. Presumably that examination will include a friendly visit from a person wielding a Q-tip and a test tube, which should be clarifying if it ever actually takes place. We’d note that Trump got the vapors and yeeted right out of the state case about the time the DNA man came knocking.

The whole process is supposed to be concluded before Thanksgiving, which means that this thing could go to trial in 2023, a mere four years after it was filed.

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“We are pleased that the parties have committed that fact discovery will resume in this case and be completed by November 16, 2022,” attorney Roberta Kaplan said in a statement shared with ATL.

If Bill Barr wants to save him from this one, he’s going to have to get really, really creative.

Carroll v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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