E. Gene Carroll leaves Manhattan Federal Court following the sentencing in the civil rape case against former US President Donald Trump, in New York, May 9, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
A federal judge on Thursday denied Donald Trump’s request to dismiss the original civil defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, the writer who claims the former president defamed her after she accused him of sexual assault.
Trump’s arguments to dismiss the case “are without merit,” Judge Louis Kaplan wrote in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The decision follows a series of recent twists and turns in the years-long legal battle between Trump and Carroll, who claims Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when she went public with her story decades later.
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