Justice Dept. push into Don case could prompt dismissal

Washington, Sept. 10: Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended the Justice Department’s move to intervene in a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, even as experts were skeptical of the federal government’s effort to protect the president in a seemingly private dispute. The Justice Department’s action is “a normal application of the law. The law is clear. It is done frequently,” Barr said at an unrelated news conference in Chicago.

He added, “The little tempest that is going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live.” But experts said it’s far from clear that the conduct at issue — whether Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll, a writer who

● THE DEPARTMENT’S move is likely to have an ancillary benefit for Trump in delaying the case, but administration lawyers have a tough task at hand trying to argue that the president was acting in his official capacity when he denied Carroll’s allegations last year, experts say.

accused him of raping her at a New York luxury department store in the 1990s — has anything to do with the scope of his White House duties.

The department’s move is likely to have an ancillary benefit for Trump in delaying the case, but administration lawyers have a tough task at hand trying to argue that the president was acting in his official capacity when he denied Carroll’s allegations last year, experts say. “I wouldn’t make such an argument, and if a president approached me to do it, I would say, ‘Don’t,’” said Stuart Gerson, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Division in President George H.W. Bush's administration when Barr was attorney general for the first time.

“The president gets sued all the time and is defended by the government,” Gerson added, “but those are for lawsuits that have to do with actions in his official capacity as the president. This isn’t anything like that.”

The Justice Department’s action is consistent with the expansive view of executive authority it has taken under Barr.