NEW YORK, September 27 (CNNBreakingNews.net) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday stopped declaring Donald Trump was immune from the Defamation lawsuit filed by author E. Jean Carroll and said it needed guidance as to whether Trump was acting as US president when he denied her rape.
In a 2-1 decision, the 2nd US Court of Appeals in Manhattan asked an appellate court in Washington to weigh up whether the laws of this have protected Trump district from liability.
The Manhattan court also gave Trump a victory when he declared he was an “employee” of the US government when he allegedly defames Carroll , a condition that underlies his immunity claim.
A dissenting judge, Denny Chin, would have let Carroll pursue “at least some” claims and said: “Mark Carroll’s allegations A plausible picture of a man pursuing a personal vendetta against a prosecutor.”
Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roberta Kaplan, lawyer for Carroll, said in a statement she was “confident” that the District of Columbia court would close the case Let go on.
Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, accused Trump of raping her late in 1995 or in a book excerpt from June 2019 At the beginning of 1996, in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store in Midtown Manhattan.
She sued Trump for defamation in November 2019 after Trump, back in his third year in the White House, knew a reporter he knew Not Carroll, said “She’s not my type” and accused her of making up the rape claim to sell her book.
Trump claimed he was protected from Carroll’s lawsuit by federal law that allowed government employees from defamation lawsuits, and said that continuing the case could trigger a flurry of frivolous lawsuits when presidents spoke.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan had found out that Trump was not a government employee and that even if he was, he acted outside the scope of his employment when he spoke about Carroll.
When he asked the DC Court of Appeal to address the second issue, Circuit judge Guido Calabresi explained the matter was “of extreme public importance” and there was genuine uncertainty about the district’s law.
“We make no verdict and express no opinion as to whether Trump’s public statements were actually defamatory or whether the allegations sexual assaults actually took place,” he wrote.
Chin said in his dissent that Trump was not a government employee and was not acting as president by making some of his statements.
“In connection with an allegation of rape, the comment ‘She’s not my type’ is certainly not something you’d expect to do She that the president of the United States says this as part of his duties,” wrote Chin.