A federal judge on Monday dismissed a defamation counterclaim by
Donald Trump against the writer
E. Jean Carroll in her pending lawsuit that accuses him of defaming her after she wrote that he had raped her.
Trump had said in the counterclaim that Carroll made false statements, which badly harmed his reputation, on the heels of May’s civil jury verdict in her favor for $5 million in a related lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Judge Lewis Kaplan in dismissing the counterclaim wrote that Carroll’s statements were “substantially true.”
Kaplan in a separate order made public Monday ruled that Carroll’s lawyers can give the Manhattan
District Attorney’s office a videotape and transcript of their deposition of Trump that they took last fall for the lawsuit.
That
order raises the chance that Trump’s sworn testimony in Carroll’s case could be used against the former
president as part of the DA’s pending criminal prosecution.