Trump and E. Jean Carroll's defamation trials remain separate after judge's ruling.

The trial for the first of two lawsuits accusing former President Donald Trump of defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she claimed he raped her in the mid-1990s has been postponed indefinitely by a New York federal judge. The judge also denied a joint request by lawyers for Trump and Carroll to consolidate her two pending civil lawsuits against Trump into a single trial. The trial previously scheduled to start April 10, for the case filed in 2019, "could prove unnecessary" if the federal appeals court that is currently reviewing the case rules that the suit is barred by law.