Former US president Donald Trump is expected to testify Wednesday in a defamation case pitting him against a prominent American columnist who says he raped her in the 1990s.
E. Jean Carroll, 78, alleges that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store.
Last week, a New York federal court judge rejected a motion by Donald Trump, who has denied the accusation, to further delay his deposition.
Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Ms Carroll's and Donald Trump's depositions should be held on October 14 and 19, respectively.
It is not known if Ms Carroll testified on Friday, and neither of the parties' lawyers responded to comment requests from AFP.
E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday shared a photo of her lawyer Roberta Kaplan on Twitter captioned "Carroll versus Trump," and wished Ms Kaplan "GOOD LUCK FOR TOMORROW." She later deleted the tweet.
Ms Kaplan, who is unrelated to the case's judge, is a co-founder of the Time's Up movement that provides legal aid to victims of sexual assault.
Ms Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, sued then-president Trump for defamation in a New York civil court in November 2019.
In an excerpt of her book published by New York Magazine that year, Ms Carroll said she was raped by Trump in the changing room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in New York in the mid-1990s.
Donald Trump denied the accusation, saying Ms Carroll was "not my type" and that she was "totally lying," which prompted the defamation suit.
The case has been delayed by procedural battles, including whether Donald Trump should be represented by the US government, since he was president at the time he made the statements.
According to several media outlets on Tuesday, Mr Trump's lawyers have always claimed that their client was protected by his executive immunity, particularly for allegedly defamatory statements he made during his term.
Last week, Donald Trump made new comments about the case on his right-wing Truth Social platform, mocking Ms Carroll's rape allegations.
According to legal experts cited in a Vice News report, Ms Carroll could argue that Donald Trump defamed her again -- this time as a private citizen.
Judge Kaplan said last week that Ms Carroll could claim damages from Donald Trump for the alleged rape starting from November 24, after a New York state law allowing survivors of sexual assault to file a civil suit regardless of the statute of limitations comes into effect.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
