Lawyers for Trump accuser challenge case intervention

NEW YORK — The Justice Department’s intervention in a defamation case brought against President Donald Trump by a woman who says he raped her decades ago is unsupported by the law, her attorneys argue in a new court filing rejecting the government’s claim that he was acting in his official capactity as president when he called author E. Jean Carroll a liar and said “she’s not my type.”

“There is not a single person in the United States — not the President and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women who they sexually assaulted,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a motion filed in federal court Tuesday. “That should not be a controversial proposition.”

Carroll’s lawyers Roberta Kaplan and Joshua Matz called it “inconceivable” that Americans would expect the president’s job to entail “viciously defaming” the victim of a crime. They are seeking a hearing to determinewhether the Justice Department acted within the scope of the law when, last month, it stepped in to defend the president, effectively making the U.S. government the defendant in the case — not Trump personally.

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. Her claim was included in a memoir published last year.

The statements at issue weremade by the president after an excerpt pertaining to Trump was published in New York Magazine.

In response, the former Elle magazine columnist filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court alleging defamation.

Carroll’s legal team also argued in the filing that the Federal Tort Claims Act, a statute cited by the Justice Department in support of its bid to intervene, does not apply to the president.