Donald Trump can't point to his time in the White House in an effort to duck a civil defamation lawsuit tied to sexual assault allegations because he waited too long to claim presidential immunity, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The case concerns Trump's denial in 2019, while he was president, of having sexually assaulted journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s. In June of that year, Trump described Carroll as “a woman who has also accused other men of things," and called her account "a totally false accusation."
In a separate civil case, Trump was ordered in May to pay Carroll $5 million after a jury found both that he sexually abused her, and had defamed her through a 2022 statement denying the assault. Trump has appealed that verdict.
