Summary
Donald Trump has been ordered to sit for a deposition the week of Dec. 16 in his defamation lawsuit against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos.
The lawsuit stems from Stephanopoulos’ March statement that Trump had been “found liable for rape,” which Trump claims is defamatory.
While a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll but not for rape, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan later stated Trump did “‘rape’ Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used.”
Both Trump and Stephanopoulos will be deposed, with sessions limited to four hours.
Hey, there’s a key difference with this case vs. all the other cases. It’s a civil lawsuit that Trump instigated. So he is the plaintiff here, he is on the offense in the lawsuit. Shouldn’t he want to give his side of the story? And if he delays this one, wouldn’t the judge be well within their rights to say “If you can’t tell us what he did that warrants a penalty, shouldn’t we just drop all this”?
And actually, I think this is the outcome Trump wants. He doesn’t want to actually win this. He wants the judge to throw it out for entirely sane reasons, because it’s one more thing to complain about and he knows his followers won’t look into the key differences between this and other cases.
If your only platform is grievance, you need new grievances to keep things fresh, even if you manufacture them yourself.