The Department of Justice on Tuesday dropped its argument that Donald Trump was acting inside the scope of his office as president of the US in 2019, when he allegedly defamed author E. Jean Carroll, who had accused him of rape.
The DOJ’s move, disclosed in a letter to Trump’s and Carroll’s lawyers in federal court in Manhattan, means the department will not seek to effectively shield Trump from civil liability in Carroll’s pending defamation lawsuit against him, which is ready for trial in January.
That effort, if it had been approved, would have killed Carroll’s lawsuit because the federal government can shield itself from civil liability under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
The letter comes two months after a trial for a separate federal lawsuit by Carroll that ended with a jury ordering Trump to pay her $5 million for sexually abusing her within the dressing room in a Latest York department store within the mid-Nineties, and for defaming her when he again denied her rape claim last 12 months. The DOJ had not played a task in that lawsuit, because the alleged actions occurred outside of Trump tenure within the White House. Trump is appealing the decision and jury award.
The DOJ on Tuesday cited a recent decision by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which suggested Trump might be sued personally if his statements about Carroll didn’t have the aim of serving the U.S. government.
The department also cited the undeniable fact that Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements about Carroll continued after he left the White House in early 2021, and that those statements are included in an amended suit Carroll filed against him last month.
“The Department of Justice is declining to certify under the Westfall Act … that defendant Donald J. Trump was acting inside the scope of his office and employment as President of the US when he made the statements that form the idea of the defamation claims in plaintiff’s Amended Grievance on this motion,” wrote Brian Boynton, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s civil division.
“The Department has determined that there isn’t any longer a sufficient basis to conclude that the previous President was motivated by “greater than an insignificant” desire to serve the US Government,” Boynton wrote.
“We’re grateful that the Department of Justice has reconsidered its position,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in an announcement.
“Now we have all the time believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of private animus, ailing will, and spite, and never as President of the US,” Kaplan said. “Now that one among the last obstacles has been removed, we stay up for trial in E Jean Carroll’s original case in January 2024.”
CNBC has requested comment from Trump’s lawyers.
Trump, while president in June 2019, said Carroll was lying and motivated by money and political animus when she went public along with her allegation that he raped her in Bergdorf Goodman in 1996 or 1997. Carroll sued him later in 2019 for defamation.
A 12 months later, the DOJ, then under the control of Trump-appointed Attorney General Bill Barr, intervened within the lawsuit, arguing that because Trump was president when he made the comments at the middle of the case, the US should replace him because the defendant within the case.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the DOJ’s bid, however the department appealed the denial to the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and continued pressing its argument even under the administration of President Joe Biden.
That appeals court later asked the federal appeals court in Washington to weigh in on the query of whether District of Columbia employment law allowed Trump to be sued for defamation for comments made as a government worker.
In its letter Tuesday, the DOJ noted: “The D.C. Court of Appeals, nonetheless, has now made clear that D.C. law doesn’t hold that any statement, whatever its actual purpose, is by definition made for official purposes just because it’s made using official channels of communication.”
The letter also said: “Furthermore, the circumstantial evidence of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent in making the
allegedly defamatory statements doesn’t support a determination on this case that he was
sufficiently motivated by a desire to serve the US Government.”
