Trump asks federal court to toss lawsuit from sexual assault accuser
Ryan King
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Former President Donald Trump‘s lawyers are pleading with a federal court to toss out a sexual assault lawsuit from former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll who has accused him of rape.
Carroll brought forward the suit in November under the Adult Survivors Act, which Trump’s legal team claims skirts constitutional due process protections. His team has also repudiated the suit as “baseless and legally defective.”
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“There’s a serious question here as to whether the Adult Survivors Act is constitutional,” Trump lawyer Michael T. Madaio declared in a court hearing on Wednesday, per Politico.
Under the Adult Survivors Act, which was recently enacted, adult victims can have one year to file suits against their assailants regardless of whether the statute of limitations expired. Carroll claimed Trump moved to rape her in a dressing room in a Bergdorf Goodman department store roughly 27 years ago before she managed to escape. The incident spanned about three minutes, she alleged.
She detailed the alleged incident publicly before releasing her book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, in 2019. Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, insisting she was “totally lying,” “not his type,” and using the accusation to prop up her book sales.
Carroll’s suit is demanding Trump retract statements she claims were defamatory and get hit with punitive damages determined during a trial. This is the second high-profile suit she has filed against him. In 2019, she sued for defamation for his denial of her accusation.
Since the alleged assault, Carroll has claimed she has not had romantic relationships and explained that she kept the accusations to herself out of fear of the stigma.
“Women who have been raped are looked at in this society as less, are looked at as spoiled goods, are looked at as rather dumb to let themselves get attacked,” she contended, per the Cut.
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Trump has faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to Carroll’s rape allegations. He has denied those allegations. In October, he posted a video to Truth Social highlighting past remarks Carroll made to CNN about rape.
“I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” Carroll said in the clip. “They think of the fantasies.”