Back to Trump, E. Jean Carroll is waging a battle on a front separate from the stolen government documents and the seditious planning of an assault on the Capitol or the New York State charges of cheating on the valuation of his property or the tampering with elections charge out of Georgia; she is accusing him of rape. And she's made more headway than other victims. Next week (Oct. 19) Trump has been forced by a judge to sit for a deposition. The judge isn't taking Trump's "let's delay this" shit.

Trump’s legal team has tried various legal tactics to delay the lawsuit and prevent him from being questioned by Carroll’s attorneys, but Judge Kaplan wrote that it was time to move forward, especially given the “advanced age” of Carroll, 78, and Trump, 76, and perhaps other witnesses.

“The defendant should not be permitted to run the clock out on plaintiff’s attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong,” he wrote.

Carroll’s lawsuit claims that Trump damaged her reputation in 2019 when he denied raping her. Trump’s legal team has been trying to squash the suit by arguing that the Republican was just doing his job as president when he denied the allegations, including when he dismissed his accuser as “not my type”.

That is a key question because if Trump was acting within the scope of his duties as a federal employee, the US government would become the defendant in the case.

The second US circuit court of appeals said in a split decision last month that Trump was a federal employee when he commented on Carroll’s claims. But it asked another court in Washington to decide whether Trump’s public statements occurred during the scope of his employment.

Kaplan, the judge, said Trump has repeatedly tried to delay the collection of evidence in the lawsuit.

“Given his conduct so far in this case, Mr Trump’s position regarding the burdens of discovery is inexcusable,” he wrote. “As this court previously has observed, Mr Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it.”