- Trump's deposition is Wednesday in E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit.
- She says Trump raped her in Manhattan 30 years ago, then defamed her by calling her a liar in 2019.
Donald Trump was reportedly in a jovial mood at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser on the eve of Wednesday's deposition in the E. Jean Carroll rape defamation lawsuit.
Trump hosted a fundraiser at his Palm Beach club and residence on Tuesday night, posing for $25,000-a-shot photos with donors for Leora Levy, a Republican US Senate candidate from Connecticut.
He teased guests who paid $1,000 per seat that an announcement concerning the 2024 presidential campaign was coming "very soon," and that people would be "very happy," two attendees told Politico's Alex Isenstadt.
The court-ordered deposition in writer E. Jean Carroll's rape defamation lawsuit is also expected to take place at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reported.
The former president will be asked — under court order and under oath —about Carroll's claims that he raped her in the mid-'90s in a Manhattan department store fitting room.
Her lawsuit alleges Trump defamed her in 2019 by calling her a liar and implying that she was not attractive enough for him to have bothered with.
—Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) October 14, 2022
Trump has fought hard to get out of the Carroll deposition and the lawsuit itself.
He was ordered to submit to questioning by Carroll's lawyers in an October 12 decision by a federal judge in Manhattan who sharply criticized the former president's repeated attempts to delay the lawsuit's progress.
"Mr. Trump has litigated this case since it began in 2019 with the effect and probably the purpose of delaying it," wrote US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
Those efforts have included a failed, so-called SLAPP counterclaim, the judge noted.
Trump has an appeal pending in the DC Court of Appeals that aims to get the case thrown out entirely.
The appeal argues that Trump is immune from defamation because he was acting within the scope of his employment as president when he called Carroll a liar in 2019.
Federal employees are generally protected from defamation suits for remarks made within the scope of their official duties.
The court is weighing whether Trump's rape denials, issued under a "Statement from President Donald J. Trump" and in remarks to reporters on the White House lawn, were made in his capacity as president. If so, the case would be thrown out.
Trump's recent post on his Truth Social platform may impact that argument, though.
In the post, he doubles down on his denials that he raped Carroll and that "This woman is not my type!" — statements made now that he is no longer covered under any federal employee protections.
The appellate court decision remains pending.
Lawyers for Trump and for Carroll declined to comment on the case.
It remained unclear Wednesday morning if the deposition will be held in person or by video conference and whether Trump will plead the Fifth, as he did when he was deposed by New York's attorney general, Letitia James, in August.
One lawyer who deposed Trump in a separate lawsuit a year ago said that in-person depositions are far better than video-conferenced ones.
"Body language, eye contact, facial expressions get lost if you're doing it remote," said the lawyer, Benjamin Dictor.
"In my experience examining him, it was important to be able to pick up on small cues — small tells — in the examination that I think would have been difficult to pick up had we done the examination remotely," he said.