Former President Donald Trump appeared for a deposition for columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against him.
The deposition took place inside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, according to CNN, and Carroll and her lawyers expressed satisfaction with the process.
“We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today. We are not able to comment further,” said a spokesperson for Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the law firm representing Carroll.
The deposition is part of a yearslong lawsuit brought by Carroll, who sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after Trump denied claims he had raped the magazine columnist in a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Carroll filed the suit after Trump repeatedly denied the allegations, describing her as “not my type.”
E. JEAN CARROLL PLANS LAWSUIT AGAINST TRUMP UNDER NEW ‘SURVIVOR’ LAW
It is not clear whether Trump answered any questions as he has been known to do in previous lawsuits. In a deposition for the New York attorney general’s investigation into his New York business dealings back in August, Trump reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment 440 times across a four-hour-long deposition.
Trump’s lawyers haven’t yet addressed the defamation. Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, previously told Politico of the impending deposition, “We look forward to establishing on the record that this case is, and always has been, entirely without merit.”
Carroll’s lawsuit, soon to be joined next month by another lawsuit accusing Trump of sexual assault under a new New York law, alleges that Trump defamed her in his response to her allegations that the former president raped her.
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“I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” Trump told the Hill in 2019. “Totally lying. I don’t know anything about her. I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her. She is — it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.”
Trump’s lawyers have argued that because he was the president at the time he made the comment, he should be considered a federal employee who was answering reporters’ questions. However, a judge denied a bid to substitute Trump with the U.S. government, which would allow it to invoke the doctrine of sovereign immunity, as a federal appeals court weighed whether to allow the lawsuit to proceed, per CNBC.
