President Donald Trump has failed in his legal bid to throw out a defamation lawsuit filed against him from advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accuses Trump of raping her 24 years ago. A New York state judge ruled that Carroll can now proceed with her lawsuit that alleges that Trump defamed her when he made public comments denying that he raped her. Trump’s lawyers tried to invalidate the lawsuit on the basis that he was not in New York and didn’t live in the state when he made his comments, so New York’s courts didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case. However, Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said Trump failed to support that position with evidence, saying: “There is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support of his motion.” Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said: “We look forward to moving ahead in this case and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client and had not even met her.” Carroll alleged last year that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
