The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge on October 12, 2022 declined to delay Donald Trump’s deposition in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case, clearing the way for questioning set for the following week. The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who said the case had already been delayed long enough and that discovery was close to complete. The court treated the deposition fight as a scheduling issue, not a decision on the merits of Carroll’s claims. ([nysd.uscourts.gov](https://nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Carroll%20II%20DI%2038%20Opinion.pdf))

Trump responded the same day with a post on his social-media platform calling the matter a “complete con job” and saying it was “a hoax and a lie.” His message also repeated his denial that he knew Carroll or that the encounter she described ever happened. The post did not change the court’s order, but it did add another public denial to a case already headed toward sworn testimony. ([nysd.uscourts.gov](https://nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Carroll%20II%20DI%2038%20Opinion.pdf))

The order fit into a larger dispute that had two moving parts. One was Carroll’s 2019 defamation case, which centered on Trump’s public attacks after she first accused him of rape. The other was a separate sexual-assault claim she planned to bring under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a revival law that took effect later in 2022. Kaplan noted that the pending deposition could matter in that later case, but his October 12 ruling itself only dealt with whether Trump could postpone being questioned in the defamation suit. ([nysd.uscourts.gov](https://nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Carroll%20II%20DI%2038%20Opinion.pdf))