The Justice Department on Tuesday withdrew allegations that the author, E. Jean Carroll, whom Donald Trump accused of rape in 2019, was acting within the scope of his presidency in defamation. rice field.
The Justice Department’s move, revealed in a letter to Trump and Carroll’s attorneys in federal court in Manhattan, follows the Department’s move to file a pending defamation lawsuit against Carroll, which is scheduled to go on trial in January. means that it will not seek to effectively shield Mr. Trump from civil liability.
Had the initiative been approved, Carroll’s case would have been null and void, as the government could defend itself against civil liability under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
The letter follows another federal lawsuit by Carroll that ended when a jury ordered Trump to pay $5 million for sexually abusing her backstage at a New York department store in the mid-1990s and for defamation charges. issued two months after the trial. When he again denied her rape allegations last year, she said: The Justice Department played no role in the case because the alleged acts took place outside of Trump’s tenure in the White House. Mr Trump is appealing her verdict and her jury award.
The Justice Department on Tuesday cited a recent ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., suggesting that President Trump could be sued personally if his remarks about Carroll did not serve the U.S. government. .
The department also said Trump’s defamatory remarks against Carroll continued after he left the White House in early 2021, and those remarks were included in an amended lawsuit Carroll filed against him last month. He also mentioned the fact that
“Under the Westfall Act, the Justice Department has rejected a finding that Donald J. Trump was acting within the scope of his duties and employment as President of the United States when he made the defamatory remarks. “Similar allegations in plaintiffs’ amended complaint in this action,” wrote Brian Boynton, Chief Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.
“The Department has determined that there is no longer sufficient basis to conclude that the former president was motivated by a ‘frivolous’ desire to serve the U.S. government,” Boynton wrote.
“We appreciate the Department of Justice’s reconsideration of its position,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said in a statement.
“I have always believed that Donald Trump’s defamatory remarks about our customers in June 2019 were out of personal hostility, malice and spite, not as President of the United States,” Kaplan said. ‘ said. “Now that one of the final stumbling blocks has been removed, we look forward to a trial in January 2024 on E. Jean Carroll’s first lawsuit.”
CNBC has reached out to Trump’s attorneys for comment.
In June 2019, while in office, Trump said Carroll was lying and motivated by money and political animosity when he publicly disclosed allegations that he had been raped at Bergdorf Goodman in 1996 or 1997. said he had been detained. Carroll sued him for defamation in late 2019.
A year later, the Justice Department, under the jurisdiction of then-Trump-appointed Attorney General Bill Barr, intervened in the case, saying that since Trump was president when he spoke at the center of the case, the United States would argued that he should be replaced. defendant in this case.
U.S. District Judge Louis Kaplan rejected the Department of Justice’s bid, but the Department appealed the denial to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and continued to argue under President Joe Biden.
The appeals court later asked a federal appeals court in Washington to consider whether the District of Columbia Employment Act allows Mr. Trump to sue for defamation for his statements as a government employee.
In a letter Tuesday, the Justice Department said, “However, the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals has held that any statement, whatever its actual purpose, is by definition an official purpose simply because it was made using “We made it clear that the DC Act did not recognize that it was done in the United States.” Official communication channel. ”
“Additionally, the circumstantial evidence of Trump’s subjective intentions
The alleged defamation statement does not support the judgment that he was in this case.
Well motivated by a desire to serve the United States Government. ”
