Another court rejects Trump’s bid to assert ‘presidential immunity’ from his many legal troubles

NEW YORK — Donald Trump cannot use presidential immunity to avoid a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday after finding that Trump waited too long to invoke the defense.

It’s the third time in recent weeks that federal courts have rejected immunity arguments from Trump as he battles multiple legal fronts in criminal and civil cases.

The ruling paves the way for Carroll’s lawsuit to proceed to trial in January. The case concerns comments Trump made about Carroll in 2019, shortly after Carroll came forward and accused Trump of raping her decades earlier. Trump said Carroll was peddling a false accusation and was motivated by money.

Three years after Carroll sued Trump for defamation over those comments, Trump attempted to assert presidential immunity, a broad doctrine that shields presidents from lawsuits arising from their official acts.

But on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found that Trump had waived his right to use the immunity defense because he waited too long to invoke it.

“We hold that presidential immunity is waivable and that Defendant waived this defense,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

All three judges on the panel were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Trump has attempted to evade many of his legal troubles by mounting aggressive immunity defenses, claiming that virtually anything he did while president cannot subject him to civil liability or criminal consequences. But courts have largely rejected those arguments so far.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Trump appealed that decision, prompting special counsel Jack Smith to take the issue directly to the Supreme Court in hopes of obtaining a swift and definitive ruling on the question.

Chutkan’s ruling came just hours after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s claims of immunity from a series of civil lawsuits that seek to hold him accountable for stoking the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the Carroll decision on Wednesday, the 2nd Circuit panel also said it did not have jurisdiction to review a trial judge’s ruling that Trump did, in fact, defame Carroll with his 2019 comments. With that ruling in place, a jury will decide at the January trial how much money in damages Trump should pay to Carroll.

The January trial will be the second trial Trump will face tied to Carroll’s rape allegations. Earlier this year, a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and that he defamed her in 2022 when he called her account a “hoax.” The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million.