Appeals court denies Trump's request to delay defamation trial

Dec. 28 (UPI) -- In another legal set back for the embattled former president, a federal appeals court on Thursday denied Donald Trump's request for a three-month delay in the start of his defamation trial brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump had made the request last week to allow his counsel time to consider their legal options after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York turned aside his argument that presidential immunity shields him from the defamation lawsuit.

His request for the trial to be pushed back 90 days was denied Thursday by the same second circuit court in a one-page ruling. The trial has been scheduled to start Jan. 16.

This is the second lawsuit Carroll has filed against the former president stemming from her 2019 accusations that he sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s.

After she made the assault public, Trump said that he had "never met" her, that the assault "never happened" and that she made it up to sell her new book.

The first case was settled by a Manhattan jury in May, which found the former president had sexually assaulted Carroll and then defamed her after she made the crime public. He was ordered to pay his victim $5 million.

After the trial, Carroll filed an amendment to the original complaint seeking $10 million following the president's appearance in a CNN town hall where he maintained that her allegations were "fake," despite the recent ruling.

Earlier this month, the appeals court rejected his argument of presidential immunity in the case on the grounds that he essentially waived the right to the privilege by waiting too long to claim it, with his counsel first raising it in January.

Trump has also claimed presidential immunity in a federal criminal case brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith. He faces four charges of interfering in the 2020 presidential election

A lower court earlier also threw out his presidential immunity argument here, but Trump has appealed it, putting that case on hold.

In his filing for a delay in the defamation lawsuit last week, he had said that this trial, too, should be paused to allow for litigation on his presidential immunity claim to play out, while suggesting that if the ruling doesn't go his way, he may take it to the Supreme Court.

Smith has asked the high court to expedite its ruling on his claims to presidential immunity.