DOJ defending Trump in rape case
The Justice Department moved Tuesday to replace President Donald Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
In a highly unusual move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.
Though the law gives employees of the federal government immunity from most defamation lawsuits, legal experts said it has rarely, if ever, been used before to protect a president, especially for actions taken before he entered office.
“The question is,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, “is it really within the scope of the law for government lawyers to defend someone accused of lying about a rape when he wasn’t even president yet?”
The motion also effectively protects Trump from any embarrassing disclosures in the middle of his campaign for reelection.
A state judge issued a ruling last month that potentially opened the door to Trump being deposed in the case before the election in November, and Carroll’s lawyers also have requested that he provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress that Carroll said she was wearing at the time of the encounter.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement issued Tuesday evening that the Justice Department’s move to intervene in the case was a “shocking” attempt to bring the resources of the U.S. government to bear on a private legal matter.
“Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent,” Kaplan said, “and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”
Carroll herself accused the president of dispatching Attorney General William Barr against her.
“TRUMP HURLS BILL BARR AT ME,” she wrote on Twitter.
Carroll sued Trump last November, claiming that he lied by publicly denying he had ever met her.
A longtime columnist for Elle magazine, she wrote in a book excerpt published in New York magazine in June 2019 that Trump had thrown her up against the wall of a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store in Manhattan, in late 1995 or early 1996.
Then, she claimed, Trump pulled down her tights, opened his pants and forced himself on her. She also insisted that security cameras captured both of them moving together before the alleged assault inside the store.
In her suit, Carroll accused Trump of defaming her by publicly stating in an interview with The Hill newspaper in June 2019 in the Oval Office that the assault never happened and that he couldn’t have raped her because she was “not my type.”
Trump, according to Carroll’s suit, also issued an official statement that same month saying she was lying about the alleged assault.
Trump said he had never met Carroll, but the two were photographed together at a party in 1987 with her former husband. The president has called the image misleading.
More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct that they said took place before he was elected president.