A judge on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss the first of two lawsuits filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accuses the former US president of defamation for denying that he raped her in the mid-1990s. Alina Habba, lawyer of Trump, has said they disagree with the court’s decision and will take steps to preserve all viable defenses. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of Manhattan has disregarded Trump’s arguments that he deserved full presidential immunity and that many of his statements about Carroll were opinions and therefore protected. The case is separate from the verdict delivered last month by a federal jury in Manhattan, which ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for defamation and sexual assault, after Trump in October 2022 denied the alleged encounter with him. Jurors did not find that Trump raped Carroll. Carroll, now 79, drew Trump’s ire in June 2019 when he accused her in New York magazine, as she was preparing to publish his memoir, of assaulting her in a fitting room at Bergdorf’s department store. Goodman in Manhattan. The writer herself is asking for at least $10 million in damages. The judge allowed him to amend her lawsuit to add comments by Trump calling her “fake” and “nutty.”