Former US President Donald Trump is asking for a stay in the defamation trial over allegations of rape. The trial, scheduled for April 25, is to be postponed by four weeks, Trump’s lawyers asked in a Tuesday letter. Trump’s right to a fair trial requires a “cooling off period” following the recent “splash of biased media coverage,” they argued.
It is regarding his indictment by the prosecutor in New York for falsifying business documents in connection with hush money payments. Trump was the first former president in US history to be impeached.
The defamation lawsuit, separate from the hush money case, was brought by former Elle fashion columnist E. Jean Carroll. She accuses Trump of defamation on two counts because he denied raping her in a dressing room at a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Carroll filed the first lawsuit following Trump accused her of lying in 2019: He doesn’t know Carroll, she’s “not my type” and she lied to boost sales of her memoir. The second lawsuit stems from a social media post in which Trump described the rape allegation as fraud and lies, among other things. The case is one of several in which Trump has to answer.
