Judge: Trump must sit for deposition in defamation lawsuit

A judge in New York ruled Wednesday that former President Donald Trump will have to answer questions under oath in a defamation lawsuit.

Trump's lawyers asked the judge to delay the testimony. The deposition will take place on October 19th.

The decision was made in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who claims that Trump raped her in a New York department store. Trump denies it. He is going to be deposed Friday.

The case has always been completely without merit, according to the statement from Habba.

Roberta Kaplan said she was happy with the ruling and would be filing new claims next month.

Judge Kaplan wrote that it was time to move forward even though Trump's legal team tried to delay the lawsuit and prevent him from being questioned.

He wrote that the defendants should not be allowed to run the clock out on the case.

According to the lawsuit, Trump damaged her reputation by denying she was raped. Trump's legal team tried to squash the suit by arguing that the Republican was just doing his job as president when he denied the allegations.

If Trump acted within his duties as a federal employee, the U.S. government would be sued.

In a split decision, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals said that Trump was a federal employee when he commented on the claims. The court in Washington was asked to determine if Trump's public statements occurred during his employment.

The judge said that Trump has been trying to delay the collection of evidence.

He wrote that Mr. Trump's position on the burdens of discovery was unacceptable. The Court has previously observed that Mr. Trump has been litigating this case since the beginning of the year in order to delay it.

The collection of evidence for the lawsuit to go to trial was almost complete, except for the depositions of Trump and Carroll.

Kaplan said that Mr. Trump had conducted extensive discovery of the person. The completion of these depositions would not impose any burdens on Mr. Trump.

The deposition could be useful when a new lawsuit is filed under New York's revival law, the Adult Survivors Act, which will allow her to seek damages for the alleged rape without the statute of limitations preventing it.

The judge said that whether the rape happened is central to the defamation claims.