Attorneys may question President-elect Donald Trump for a portion of the week leading up to Christmas in his defamation lawsuit against ABC News.
In a virtual court hearing on Friday morning, attorneys for the broadcast network and This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos contended that Trump needs to be available for a deposition the following week, prior to the defendants’ deadline of December 24 to submit a motion for summary judgment in order to avoid a trial.
To the defense team’s apparent dismay, Trump has not yet made himself available for a recorded deposition.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid told ABC News’s attorney Nathan Siegel, “I understand your frustration.” She pointed out that the president-elect now has a totally different stance and should be able to make himself available, even though in the past he had a pretty strong case for not being available for a deposition during a hectic election campaign.
Siegel told the judge that he would go down to Florida to question Trump close to his Mar-a-Lago estate and keep the deposition to four hours in order to make it as easy as possible for the president-elect. If it would be more convenient for Trump’s schedule, he also raised the prospect of a sitdown on Saturday.
Alejandro Brito, Trump’s attorney, responded, “I will do everything in my power to make the president available.” However, my capacity to do so is limited. The Secret Service must be taken into consideration. He promised the court that he would get to work right away with Trump’s team to determine his availability for next week.
Requests for comment were not immediately answered by ABC News or Trump representatives.
Trump launched the lawsuit against ABC News and Stephanopoulos earlier this year after the anchor claimed on-air that Trump had been found guilty of rape by a Manhattan federal jury. Stephanopoulos attended the Friday court via Zoom while seated in front of a blue high-backed couch.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Trump’s home court, the Southern District of Florida, claimed that Stephanopoulos and the network had defamed him when the celebrity anchor made the accusation in a heated discussion with Representative Nancy Mace on March 10.
Although the jury found Trump guilty of violence and found him guilty of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll during a mid-1990s encounter in a department shop, they did not decide that she had evidence that he had raped her. However, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan stated months later that Mr. Trump did, in fact, rape Ms. Carroll as that term is usually used and understood when dismissing Trump’s countersuit against Carroll.
In a significant success for Trump, a federal court refused to dismiss the lawsuit in July, allowing it to move on.
On Friday, Trump’s attorney contended that the defense can file a move for summary judgment, which would end the case without a jury trial, without a deposition. Brito asserted that while the only question for a summary judgment is whether or whether the defendants’ words are defamatory, Siegel wants to know what transpired between Carroll and the president-elect.
“We have no intention of going over the fundamental question of what transpired or did not transpire between President Trump and E. Jean Carroll again,” Siegel said. He asserted that his team has the right to confront Trump about previous remarks that would refute his allegation that ABC defamed him and cast doubt on his suitability.
Brito consented to quickly obtain a response from Trump’s team regarding when he could sit down, even though he resisted the call for a deposition.
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