Trump now faces three trials over six-month span during critical phase of 2024 campaign
A judge set a January trial date in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against Trump.
TroibNews 
NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s trial calendar is starting to fill up.
On Thursday, a federal judge set a trial date of Jan. 15, 2024, in a defamation lawsuit brought against the former president by writer E. Jean Carroll. It will be sandwiched between two other Trump trials: a civil trial scheduled for this October in a fraud lawsuit against Trump and his company brought by the New York attorney general, and a criminal trial set for late March 2024 on charges that Trump falsified business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star.
The run of trials will occur during a pivotal period in the presidential race. Campaigns will be in full swing, and primary voting is scheduled to begin in early 2024. Trump remains the frontrunner for the GOP nomination and has used his mounting legal troubles to raise money from supporters.
No trial date has been set for Trump’s latest — and perhaps most serious — case: his federal indictment in the Southern District of Florida for allegedly hoarding classified documents and obstructing the government’s attempts to get them back.
The January defamation trial will be Trump’s second courtroom battle against Carroll, who has accused him of assaulting her in a department store in the 1990s. Last month, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and ordered Trump to pay her $5 million in damages. The defamation claim in that case arose from Trump’s 2022 statement calling Carroll’s account a “hoax.”
Trump didn’t testify in that trial or attend any of it. He has appealed the verdict.
Trump now faces a separate defamation case from Carroll, arising from earlier remarks he made in 2019. And she recently amended that lawsuit to include a new claim concerning comments he made on CNN in May, the day after the verdict in the first trial. “I have no idea who this woman [is],” Trump said during a “town hall” event, calling her claims “a fake story, made up story” and referring to Carroll as a “whack job.”
