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Jane Carroll (center), who says former President Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s, speaks to reporters as she leaves a New York courtroom after an October hearing in her defamation lawsuit. The Justice Department said Tuesday it would continue to defend Trump. John Minchillo / AP Hide Caption
Toggle Caption John Minchillo / AP
Jane Carroll (center), who says former President Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s, speaks to reporters as she leaves a New York courtroom after an October hearing in her defamation lawsuit. The Justice Department said Tuesday it would continue to defend Trump.
John Minchillo/AFP
Biden’s Justice Department is pressing ahead with a controversial legal effort begun under former President Donald Trump to intervene on Trump’s behalf in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a writer who says Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
E Jane Carroll made accusations against Trump in her memoirs published in 2019. Trump denied the allegations and accused Carroll of lying to sell books.
Carroll sued the former president for defamation, but the lawsuit has been stuck in a lawsuit since the Trump administration’s Justice Department tried to intervene on Trump’s behalf and make the government the defendant instead of the now former president.
In its filing late Monday, the Department of Justice — now under the Biden administration — sought to continue its defense of Trump while distancing itself from his alleged actions.
“President Trump’s response at the time to Mrs. Carroll’s serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned their credibility as crude and disrespectful,” Brian Boynton, the department’s acting chief of civilian, wrote in the memo. “But this issue is not about whether Mr. Trump’s response was appropriate. Nor does it turn out to be the credibility of Mrs. Carroll’s allegations.”
Instead, Boynton said, it boils down to a few legal questions, including whether the president is a “government employee” and whether Trump’s denials took place within his office.
The department said the answer to both questions is yes, and thus under federal law, the department said the government should be able to replace Trump as a defendant in the case.
If the department succeeds in its efforts, legal experts said the move would effectively end the case because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has criticized the Department of Justice’s decision to continue interference efforts under Trump.
“The Department of Justice’s position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong because it gives federal officials a free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by scolding any woman who has the courage to come forward with public brutality,” she said on Twitter. Calling a woman you sexually assaulted as a ‘liar’, ‘whore’ or ‘not my type’ – as Donald Trump has done here – is not the official act of an American president.”
Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a “liar,” a “whore,” or “not my type” — as Donald Trump did here — is not the official act of an American president. We remain confident that Judge Kaplan’s decision will be confirmed by the Second Circuit.
– Robbie Kaplan (@kaplanrobbie) June 8, 2021
The new file is the latest development in the case since the Trump Department of Justice took the unusual first step of seeking to intervene in the lawsuit last year.
The Department of Justice and then-Attorney General William Barr came under fire for the move, which opponents said was one of a series of measures taken by the department under Barr that benefited Trump or his friends.
A federal judge in October denied the Justice Department’s initial attempt to intervene on Trump’s behalf. Trump has appealed the decision to the Second US Court of Appeals in New York, where the matter now remains.
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