Former President Donald Trump continued sharing evidence with his rape accuser E. Jean Carroll last month pursuant to her long-pending defamation lawsuit against him, and all discovery in the case will conclude in the late autumn, newly released court documents reveal.
“We are pleased that the parties have committed that fact discovery will resume in this case and be completed by Nov. 16, 2022,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote.
Court documents setting the brisk schedule appear to put an end to years of stagnation and delay.
If the deadline holds, it will fall just days longer than the third anniversary of the lawsuit’s filing on Nov. 9, 2019. Carroll, a famed columnist, originally brought her lawsuit to state court, accusing Trump of falsely denying that he raped her in the dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
Then a sitting U.S. president, Trump responded to questions from The Hill about the alleged sexual assault by claiming: “She’s not my type.” Trump added: “It never happened.” Carroll sued months later, only to see the case move to federal court after the Department of Justice intervened in the case on his behalf.
At that point, the lawsuit previously captioned Carroll v. Trump was rebranded Carroll v. United States—until Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Justice Department’s motion to intervene. The judge called it one of a series of delay tactics by Trump, including attempts to evade service of process at his New York residence and the White House and what he described as “frivolous” motions practice.
Now that the lawsuit is captioned Carroll v. Trump once again, the litigation heated up again early this year. In March, Judge Kaplan rejected an effort by the former president’s attorney Alina Habba to countersue Carroll under anti-SLAPP law, a statute meant to deter lawsuits designed to stifle free speech. Discovery in the case resumed on April 1, according to a letter filed with the court on Thursday.
“On April 1, 2022, Defendant proposed—and Plaintiff agreed—that the parties resume discovery in this case,” Roberta Kaplan wrote in the letter.
She added in a hypothetical: “Fact discovery started in state court in January 2020, but the parties had only begun exchanging written discovery when the case was removed to federal court.”
The schedule agreed upon by attorneys for both parties reads as follows:
1. The parties shall serve any and all written discovery requests on each other on or before May 27, 2022.
2. The parties shall substantially complete their productions of written discovery and requests for inspection or examination on or before August 3, 2022.
3. Depositions to take place between August 3, 2022, to October 19, 2022.
4. The parties shall make any and all expert disclosures under Rule 26(a)(2) on or before
September 16, 2022.
5. The parties shall substantially complete any and all fact discovery on or before October
19, 2022.
6. The parties shall complete any and all expert discovery on or before November 16, 2022.
Judge Kaplan has not yet signed the proposed order.
Habba did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s email requesting comment.
Read the filings, below:
[Images via Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour, MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images]
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