Back to New York.
It's going to take more focus than Trump is capable of to sit for a deposition in one case when there are others closing in on him.
Also this month: the civil trial for defamation and battery of E. Jean Carroll v Donald J Trump.
The first of two trials is set to begin on April 25. Another trial that was also originally scheduled for April has been indefinitely postponed.
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The cases both center on the same incident, which allegedly took place at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan sometime in 1995 or 1996. At the time, Carroll was a recognizable magazine columnist and TV talk show personality.
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Carroll first sued Trump in 2019 for defamation over his claims that year that he had never met her and that she had invented the story in order to increase sales of her book. (The trial for that case, which is referred to as "Carroll I" in court documents, has been postponed indefinitely.)
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[That case] has been hung up on an important legal question: Was Trump acting in his capacity as president when he made those denials?
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The question is now in the hands of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which held arguments in January. It's not clear yet when a ruling will come.
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[L]awmakers in New York opened a temporary one-year window to allow victims of past sexual assaults to bring their old claims to court. Carroll then filed a second lawsuit, which makes a new defamation claim over his statements in 2022 and adds a battery claim for the alleged assault itself. This case, called "Carroll II," is the subject of the trial that begins this month.
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According to Carroll's complaint, the two had a chance run-in at the store, where Trump was shopping for a gift for "a girl." He asked for her advice, and the two shopped together before he pushed her into a dressing room and raped her, she alleges.
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For 20 years, she set the story aside, she says, worried that her reputation and career could be harmed by making the allegation public while consequences for Trump would be minimal.
But her view changed in 2016 and 2017, she says, as Trump was elected president and accusations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein broke into the public view.
"The walls that she had erected in her mind — the fear that Trump would emerge unscathed, the wariness of allowing him and his allies to come after her, the doubt that speaking up would actually matter, and the nagging anxiety that she was somehow to blame for being raped — began to crumble," her lawsuit says.
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Trump denied the allegations.
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"I don't know this woman, have no idea who she is," he wrote in a statement posted to Truth Social last October. "And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!"
NPR
The man will never learn not to say the things he's not supposed to say.
The court is currently in the process of preparing for jury selection. Lawyers on both sides have submitted proposals for jury questionnaires or jury instructions.
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The jury, once selected, will be anonymous, Kaplan ordered last month. The court cannot "ignore the significant risk that jurors selected to serve in this case will be affected by concern that they could be targeted for unwanted media attention, outside pressure, and retaliation and harassment from persons unhappy with any verdict that might be returned," Kaplan wrote.
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The case is taking place in federal court at the Southern District of New York, meaning potential jurors are drawn from Manhattan, the Bronx, and a handful of suburban counties north of the city.
I will admit that New York business of opening a one-year opportunity to redress old allegations of rape seems a little on the nose for a suit against Trump. I wonder if that will play any part in his defense. And if a jury in New York will care anyway.
UPDATE 11:52 am:
And who's his friend in the pink pajamas?
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