A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim in the upcoming E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, finding that the former president had waited too long to invoke such a defense.
The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that presidential immunity is “waivable,” and that Trump had waived this defense because he waited three years to raise it. The decision follows Judge Lewis Kaplan’s opinion in June, in which he said that Trump had not only waited too long to claim immunity but that invoking it in this case generally was not appropriate.
Carroll, an author and former Elle magazine columnist, publicly accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s. She sued Trump in November 2019 while he was still president, alleging he had defamed her by claiming she was lying. He did not raise the immunity claim until December 2022.
Carroll sued him again in 2022 for defamation and sexual assault, which she was able to do under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. The legislation, which expired last month, provided a one-year window for some sexual assault survivors to pursue civil litigation against their alleged assailants despite the statute of limitations.
The second defamation lawsuit went to trial in New York earlier this year as Trump’s immunity claim in the first lawsuit played out in the courts. The jury ultimately found Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.
The appeals court decision sets the stage for Carroll’s first lawsuit against Trump to go to trial in January. Trump attorney Alina Habba called the ruling “fundamentally flawed” and said Trump’s legal team “will continue to pursue justice and appropriate resolution.”
His legal team has also raised the presidential immunity defense in his federal election interference criminal case as he seeks to delay the March 4 trial. The answer to that question may now rest in the Supreme Court’s hands.
