One more thorn in the side of the now presidential candidate of 2024. An American journalist, who accuses Donald Trump of having raped her in the 1990s, relaunched her civil lawsuit on Thursday against the former president of the United States. United, thanks to a new law in New York.
A double court case of alleged rape and defamation has pitted E. Jean Carroll, 78, against Donald Trump, 76, in the Manhattan federal civil court since 2019, both of whom produced their sworn depositions in October before a New York judge.
In the defamation proceedings, E. Jean Carroll, author and former columnist for "Elle" magazine, had sued Donald Trump in civil proceedings in November 2019. She accused him of having defamed her for having called a "complete lie", in June 2019, his allegations of rape in a New York department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996.
Towards a trial in 2023
The Republican president then in office (2017-2021) replied that he had never met her and that she was "not his kind of woman".
His lawyers have also always claimed that he was protected in 2019 by his immunity as head of state.
As for the accusations of rape, E. Jean Carroll had not been able to file a formal complaint in 2019, since the alleged facts were prescribed.
However, on November 24, a new law in the State of New York (“Adult Survivors Act”) came into force allowing, for one year, victims of sexual assault to reactivate any old complaints and request a trial at the civil.
The law firm of E. Jean Carroll, Kaplan Hecker and Fink, and the federal justice system in Manhattan therefore released several court documents on Thursday accusing Donald Trump of "rape" in particular and requesting a civil trial in 2023 in order to obtain damages.
#MeToo pushed her to testify
In the introduction to the complaint, which is now admissible and which relates all the facts, Donald Trump is accused "about 27 years ago (…) in the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in New York (from ) grabbing E. Jean Carroll, pinning and pinning her against the wall of a fitting room with his shoulder and raping her”.
The complainant had been silent for more than 20 years before telling her story in a book at the end of the 2010s in favor of the #MeToo movement launched in 2017 against violence against women.
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“While I respect and admire people who speak out, this case unfortunately constitutes a diversion of the objective of the law which creates a serious precedent and risks delegitimizing the words of real victims” reacted Alina Habba, lawyer for Donald Trump. in the file.
Last October, the former president called the accusations a "hoax and a lie".
