Former president Donald Trump this week asked a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll — a writer who says Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s — citing a new state law intended to protect free speech.
Trump’s request cited a new “anti-SLAPP” law passed in New York state last year. The law, which was signed last year, is intended to stop “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” — instances where wealthy companies or people seek to silence their detractors with frivolous lawsuits.
The law allows defendants to seek a quick dismissal of the case, if they can prove the lawsuits against them have no “substantial basis in fact and law.” In such cases, the people who brought the suit have to pay the defendant’s legal fees.
In his filing, Trump argued the same law should also protect the most powerful person in the country — since, at the time when Carroll filed suit, he was still president. Her lawsuit says that Trump defamed her by denying her allegations that he assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
In the filing, Trump said that Carroll’s sole purpose in filing the suit was to retaliate for truthful comments, “maliciously inhibiting his free exercise of speech.”
The filing was signed by Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, who began representing Trump in this case and other lawsuits in September. Habba asked U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to grant Trump permission to file the anti-SLAPP claim.
Habba declined to comment on Thursday.
Some experts said Trump’s motion ran counter to the intention of New York’s law.
“The spirit of anti-SLAPP laws are to prevent powerful people from bullying the powerless,” said Evan Mascagni of the Public Participation Project, a national group that advocates for anti-SLAPP laws. “Was an anti-SLAPP law designed to protect the president of the United States?”
Mascagni said several unsettled legal questions remained about New York’s law, which was written to offer broad protections. Mascagni said courts were just beginning to answer them — and sometimes different courts disagreed. Does the state anti-SLAPP law apply to federal cases, like this one? Does it apply retroactively, to cases filed before the law was passed? And does it apply to public officials like Trump?
Carroll’s lawsuit, which she filed in New York State Court in November 2019, has moved slowly because of a series of procedural arguments. First, it stalled as the courts considered Trump’s claim that the presidency made him immune to lawsuits in state court. Even after Trump left office, the case — now moved to federal court — has been slowed again by arguments over whether the U.S. Justice Department can continue to represent him.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, described Trump’s new filing as another effort to bog down the case.
“This transparent effort at delay by Trump’s latest attorney is too little, too late. It’s too little because there is absolutely no merit to his invocation of the anti-SLAPP statute here. It’s too late because Trump sat on his hands for a year after the anti-SLAPP law was passed,” Kaplan said in a statement. “When it comes to E. Jean Carroll, the truth will prevail.”
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