NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump lashed out on social media against the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday after it stopped supporting his claim that the presidency shields him from liability against a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually attacked her in the mid-1990s.

Trump said in a post on his social media platform that the department’s reversal a day earlier in the lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll was part of the “political Witch Hunt” he faces while campaigning for the presidency as a Republican.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carroll, 79, sued Trump, 77, for defamation months after he vehemently denied her claims first made publicly in a 2019 memoir that a chance encounter between the pair at a Bergdorf Goodman store began with flirtations but ended in a violent encounter inside a dressing room in a desolate section of the store.

The progression of the lawsuit, filed in 2020, was delayed for three years as an appeals court considered claims by Trump and the Justice Department that he was protected from liability for remarks he made while president. When Joe Biden became president, the Justice Department did not change its position.

But the department said in a letter to a Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday that circumstances have changed since it made its original recommendation and it no longer believes Trump can claim that his comments about Carroll were carried out as part of his official duties as president.

It noted that a court in Washington, D.C., had recently further defined when a president is immune from civil lawsuits, and it cited a federal jury’s $5 million award to Carroll in May after finding that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her, though he didn’t rape her. It also considered that the lawsuit has been updated with remarks Trump made about Carroll’s claims after leaving the presidency.

In three posts Wednesday on Truth Social, Trump offered fresh support for claims he made about Carroll that led the jury to conclude he had defamed her.

“The statements that I made about Carroll are all true. I didn’t Rape her (I won that at trial) and other than for this case, I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS, WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE, OR ANYTHING ABOUT HER….,” he wrote.

The trial resulted from a lawsuit Carroll filed in November after New York state temporarily enabled adult victims of sexual attacks to sue their abusers for damages even if the abuse occurred decades earlier. Her defamation claim at the trial resulted from statements Trump made last October.

For several days, Carroll testified that Trump’s attack caused her to shut down her romantic life afterward, and his comments after her memoir was published shattered her reputation and led to a “staggering” onslaught of hateful and occasionally threatening messages toward her.

Trump did not appear at the two-week trial, though significant portions of an October videotaped deposition were shown to the jury.

In Wednesday’s social media posts, Trump called the trial “very unfair,” criticized the judge as hostile and biased, and said his lawyers “due to their respect for the Office of the President and the incredulity of the case, did not want me to testify, or even be at the trial…..”

He added: “WE ARE STRONGLY APPEALING THIS TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE!!!”

A day after the verdict, Trump repeated many of his earlier claims about Carroll during a CNN town hall, prompting Carroll to amend her original defamation lawsuit to include those remarks. She now seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages at a trial scheduled for January that may consist only of a damages phase.

Trump then countersued, saying Carroll defamed him with comments she made a day after the verdict.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump now has a Dec. 23 deadline to undergo questioning in a former “Apprentice” contestant’s defamation lawsuit over what he said in denying her sexual assault allegations, a court said Monday.

The new deadline for Trump’s deposition — a legal term for out-of-court, pretrial questioning under oath — comes as Summer Zervos’ 2017 lawsuit emerges from a more than yearlong freeze.

“The defendant is now a private citizen, and he just cannot delay this litigation any longer,” Zervos attorney Moira Penza said told a Manhattan judge’s law clerk during the teleconference.

Then-President Trump was weeks away from a January 2020 deposition deadline when he won a delay to ask the New York’s top court to consider holding off the case entirely until he was out of office. He argued that sitting presidents couldn’t be sued in state courts.

After he left office this year, the state high court — called the Court of Appeals — said the question was moot. The case returned to a Manhattan trial court for both sides to continue gathering evidence.

Depositions of both Trump and Zervos are now due by Dec. 23. Their lawyers have two weeks to try to nail down specific dates, or the court will set them.

Zervos, a California restaurateur, appeared on “The Apprentice” in 2006. Trump was then the host.

A decade later, he was the Republican presidential nominee, and she was among a series of women who publicly accused him of sexual assaults or harassment years before. Zervos said he subjected her to unwanted kissing and groping during what she thought would be career-advice meetings in 2007 at his New York office and at a California hotel where he was staying.

He denied her allegations, retweeted a message that called her claims “a hoax” and described the women who accused him of sexual assault and harassment as “liars” trying to hurt his 2016 campaign’s chances.

Zervos then sued, saying he hurt her reputation. She is seeking a retraction, an apology and unspecified damages.

Former Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz called Zervos’ claims meritless and said Trump’s statements were true and protected by free speech rights.

Trump’s new lawyer, Alina Habba, said Monday she plans to expand the former president’s response to the case. She said she planned to draw on a 2020 New York law meant to protect people from frivolous lawsuits launched by the powerful to squelch criticism.

The law expanded an existing statute, making it easier to fight defamation claims when they center on communication in public “in connection with an issue of public interest,” defined as “any subject other than a purely private matter.”

Trump previously raised a somewhat similar California law among his defenses in Zervos’ suit. Still, Habba said drawing on the New York statute would make a difference.

“With the new law in place, I think this case will be wrapped up very quickly,” she said after court.

When the measure was making its way through the state Legislature last year, a sponsor pointed to Trump himself as a rationale.

“For decades, Donald Trump, his billionaire friends, large corporations and other powerful forces have abused our legal system by attempting to harass, intimidate and impoverish their critics with strategic lawsuits against public participation,” Democratic state Sen. Brad Hoylman said in a July 2020 statement.

Trump and his campaign have sued a number of media outlets over their coverage of him, including a lawsuit he filed last month against his estranged niece and The New York Times over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices. Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoads Ha called it “an attempt to silence independent news organizations.”

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they come forward publicly as Zervos has.

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