- The Washington Times - Monday, April 17, 2023

A federal judge in New York on Monday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to delay a trial over whether he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll when he denied accusations that he raped her.

Mr. Trump’s legal team last week had urged U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to grant a monthlong “cooling-off period” because of the “deluge of prejudicial media coverage” of criminal fraud charges filed against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The civil defamation trial is scheduled to begin on April 25, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers wanted it postponed until May 23.

In a one-page order Monday, Judge Kaplan said the criminal charges are “entirely unrelated” to the defamation lawsuit filed against Mr. Trump. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment made to an adult film actress.

The judge also said that was no reason to believe it would be easier for the former president to get an impartial jury in May rather than April, and that some of the media coverage was based on Mr. Trump’s own remarks.

“It does not sit well for Mr. Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him,” Judge Kaplan wrote.

Ms. Carroll accused Mr. Trump of raping her at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s which he has denied. The trial will not focus on her rape claims but on whether Mr. Trump defamed her when he denied her accusations.

While proclaiming his innocence, Mr. Trump fired back accusing Ms. Carroll was lying about the rape in order to increase book sales, to advance a political agenda and to make money.

In a 2019 interview, Mr. Trump said that Ms. Carroll is “totally lying” about being raped.

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.

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