Judge cancels Trump bid to delay suit from woman alleging rape
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Manhattan judge Verna Saunders pointed to a recent US Supreme Court ruling that the president isn't immune from a New York prosecutor's criminal investigation.
A New York judge cancelled US President Donald Trump's bid to delay a lawsuit from a woman who accused him of rape. The judge said on Thursday that the presidency doesn't shield Trump from the case.
Manhattan judge Verna Saunders pointed to a recent US Supreme Court ruling that the president isn't immune from a New York prosecutor's criminal investigation, and said the same principle applies to E Jean Carroll's defamation suit, in which Trump's lawyers have argued that the Constitution bars presidents from being dragged into lawsuits in state courts.
The decision allows Carroll -- who's seeking Trump's DNA as potential evidence -- to keep pursuing her suit. She says he slurred her in denying her claim that he raped her in the 1990s.
Carroll, who was a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist until December, went public last year with an allegation that Trump raped her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
Trump said Carroll was lying to sell a memoir and that he'd never met her.
Previous US Supreme Court decisions have said incumbent presidents can't be sued anywhere over official actions. But they are subject to federal civil suits regarding private behaviour.
The high court hasn't specifically addressed whether suits over a president's private conduct can unfold in state courts.