Donald Trump and a poor soul who cannot be saved. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
In New York, where Donald Trump is from, they call it chutzpah. The president has repeatedly ducked the process server in a defamation suit brought by Elle advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claims he sexually assaulted her in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman years ago. Now he argues in a proposed order filed Friday that the Supreme Court of New York County lacks personal jurisdiction over him because he’s not a New York domiciliary.
“[T]he Court can take judicial notice that the President of the United States has resided in the White House for the past three years,” Trump’s lawyers noted in a memorandum supporting their motion to get Carroll’s case dismissed before discovery. And indeed, Judge Deborah A. Kaplan might take judicial notice of that fact. Although Trump owns a residence, filed his taxes (one assumes), is registered to vote, and maintains substantial business ties in trust (cough-cough) in the state of New York.
Politicians routinely retain their home-state residency while representing their constituents in Washington, but Trump’s lawyers insist that he has been domiciled in D.C. for the past three years. All of his allegedly defamatory assault-denying took place outside New York, and thus he is no longer subject to personal jurisdiction in the state. They also point out that Trump changed his official domicile to Florida in September, which was before the suit was filed, but after he described Carroll as “fake news” and “not my type” and claimed never to have met her.
They even went one further, arguing, “Given that President Trump was not physically served in New York State, there are no other grounds for in personam jurisdiction under CPLR 301,” conveniently burying in a footnote the fact that he absolutely refused to be served at his New York residence, his D.C. domicile, or his lawyer’s office, and the court had to sign an ex parte order allowing Carroll to effect process by mail. Which is rather like the old trick of murdering your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re a wretched orphan, but perhaps Judge Kaplan won’t notice that awkward detail.
(Judge Kaplan will notice.)
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) called Trump’s motion “obviously ridiculous,” describing it to the AP as “a transparent effort to avoid discovery at all costs in a case involving a sexual assault.” Which is just crazy, of course. Look at the last president who agreed to be deposed for a tort arising out of a sexual assault claim. Nothing bad happened to him, right?
OH, WAIT!
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.