E. Jean Carroll Suit Against Trump To Proceed After Judge Rules Against DOJ

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E. Jean Carroll (left), who has accused President Trump of raping her in the 1990s, leaves federal court in New York City after a hearing last week in her defamation lawsuit.





John Minchillo/AP



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John Minchillo/AP



National
Justice Department Intervenes To Take Over Trump’s Defense In Defamation Lawsuit

«To conclude otherwise would require the court to adopt a view that virtually everything the president does is within the public interest by virtue of his office, Kaplan wrote. «The government has provided no support for that theory, and the court rejects it as too expansive.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House, Carroll or the Justice Department.

The legal context

If the judge had allowed the U.S. to replace Trump as the defendant in the lawsuit, legal experts said it likely would have spelled the end of the case because the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.

Under the law, if a U.S. Postal Service worker causes a car accident while delivering the mail and is sued, the federal government can intervene. If the government certified that the postal worker was performing his or her official duties when the accident happened, then the federal government can step in and become the defendant in the lawsuit.



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Attorney General William Barr and the Justice Department argued that the same principle applied in the Carroll case.

Barr had said he considered it «standard practice that a federal employee being sued in this way would alert the Justice Department so that it could enter the matter, which the attorney general said was again appropriate in this case.

The attorney general’s critics, including House Democrats and some former Justice Department employees, have called him too sympathetic to Trump and too eager to deploy the department in ways that help the president politically.