Judge: U. S. can’t stand for the president in lawsuit

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Tuesday denied President Trump’s request that the United States replace him as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped a woman in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

The decision by U. S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan came after the Justice Department argued that the United States — and by extension the American people — should replace Trump as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E. Jean Carroll.

The government’s lawyers contended that the United States could step in as the defendant because Trump was forced to respond to her lawsuit to prove he was physically and mentally fit for the job.

A lawyer for Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, called it a clear victory for her client.

“The simple truth is that President Trump defamed our client because she was brave enough to reveal that he had sexually assaulted her, and that brutal, personal attack cannot be attributed to the Office of the President,” Kaplan said in a statement.

The judge ruled that a law protecting federal employees from being sued individually for things they do within the scope of their employment didn’t apply to a president.

“The President of the United States is not an employee of the Government within the meaning of the relevant statutes,” Kaplan wrote. “Even if he were such an employee, President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms.

Carroll would not have been within the scope of his employment. Accordingly, the motion to substitute the United States in place of President Trump is denied.”

Carroll, a former longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, said in her lawsuit that in the fall of 1995 or spring of 1996 she and Trump met in a chance encounter when they recognized each other at the Bergdorf Goodman store.

She said they engaged in a lighthearted chat about trying on a seethrough lilac gray bodysuit when they made their way to a dressing room, where she said Trump pushed her against a wall and raped her.

Carroll, who wants unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements, also seeks a DNA sample from Trump to see whether it matches asyetunidentified male genetic material found on a dress that she says she was wearing during the alleged attack.