COULD SCUMBAG TRUMP AND ENABLER BILL BARR BE ANY MORE EMBARRASSING TO
THE COUNTRY?
Justice Dept. Says Trump’s Denial of Rape Accusation
Was an Official Act
The
writer E. Jean Carroll sued the president for defamation after he denied
sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Now the government wants to defend him.
By Benjamin Weiser and Alan Feuer
- Oct. 19, 2020, 5:44 p.m. ET
The Justice Department said on Monday
that President Trump should not be sued personally for having denied a rape
allegation because he made the statement while acting in his official capacity
as president.
Lawyers for the government made the
argument as they defended Attorney General William P. Barr’s decision to intervene in a defamation lawsuit filed in a New York
court against President Trump by E. Jean Carroll, the writer.
Ms. Carroll has said that Mr. Trump
raped her in a department store two decades ago and then falsely denied the
attack, branding her a liar and harming her reputation.
But Justice
Department lawyers say that even though the allegation concerns an incident
that occurred decades before Mr. Trump became president, his denial was still
an official act because he “addressed matters relating to his fitness for
office as part of an official White House response to press inquiries.”
“Given the president’s position in our
constitutional structure, his role in communicating with the public is
especially significant,” the Justice Department wrote, adding, “The president’s
statements fall within the scope of his employment for multiple reasons.”
On Sept. 8, the Justice Department took
the highly unusual step of seeking to intervene in the case even though it
revolved around an event that allegedly occurred in the 1990s, long before Mr.
Trump became president.
Using a law designed to protect federal
employees from defamation suits when they perform their duties, Mr. Barr sought
to transfer the lawsuit from state court to Federal District Court in Manhattan
and to substitute the federal government for Mr. Trump as the defendant.
“There is not a single person in the
United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description
includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” Ms. Carroll’s lawyers
wrote.
In its filing on Monday, however, the
Justice Department argued that Mr. Trump had not slandered Ms. Carroll but
merely rebutted her allegations. That fell within the scope of his official
role as president, the department said, because a claim of rape — even a false
one — could have an impact on his job.
Ms. Carroll’s allegations “sought to
call into question the president’s fitness for office and a response was
necessary for the president to effectively govern,” the Justice Department
said. “The president’s challenged statements were directly relevant to his role
as president and leader of the executive branch.”
The controversy over the case even
arose during a presidential campaign event last week, when the
Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., alluded to it, among other examples,
to accuse Mr. Trump of treating the Justice Department “as if it’s your own law
firm.”
“‘I’m being sued because a woman’s accusing me of rape. Represent me. Represent me,’” Mr. Biden said sarcastically, as if speaking in the president’s voice, adding, “What’s that all about?”
A day after the requested transfer of
the case, Mr. Barr told reporters in Chicago that it was
routine to substitute the government as the defendant in lawsuits against
federal officials and that the action was taken at the White House’s request.
“The law is clear,”
Mr. Barr said. “It is done frequently. And the little tempest that’s going on
is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live.”
In their court papers attacking the
government’s move, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, Roberta A. Kaplan and Joshua Matz,
acknowledged that while it may be typical for the government to take the place
of low-level federal employees like letter carriers when they are sued, it was
not normal to do so for the president.
Ms. Carroll, a longtime advice
columnist for Elle magazine, wrote in a book published last year and in
excerpts in New York magazine that Mr. Trump attacked her in a dressing room in
the luxury Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s.
According to Ms. Carroll’s account, Mr.
Trump had stopped her and said, “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”
She claimed Mr. Trump threw her against
a wall, pulled down her tights, opened his pants and raped her.
In response, Mr. Trump denied that he
had ever met Ms. Carroll and accused her of lying, adding, “She’s not my type.”
In a written statement, Mr. Trump also said Ms. Carroll was “trying to sell a
new book.”
He added, “It should
be sold in the fiction section.”
In her lawsuit, filed in November, Ms. Carroll said
Mr. Trump’s defamatory statement had led her to lose good will and the support
of her readers.
The defamation suit is a legal tactic
that at least one other woman, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,”
Mr. Trump’s reality television show, has adopted in an effort to force the
president to give a sworn deposition about her allegation that she was sexually
harassed. Several women accused Mr. Trump of sexual harassment and assault
during the 2016 election; he denied all the allegations, calling them liars.
In the Carroll lawsuit, Mr. Trump,
initially represented by private lawyers, tried to delay the case on grounds
that as a sitting president, he was immune to civil lawsuits in state court.
But in August, a New York State judge,
Verna L. Saunders, denied his request. She cited a ruling by the United States
Supreme Court this summer, which rejected a claim by Mr. Trump that, as
president, he was immune from a state criminal investigation. That dispute
arose after the Manhattan district attorney’s office subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s
accountants for his tax returns.
The judge’s ruling meant that Mr. Trump would have to provide a DNA sample, as requested by Ms.
Carroll’s lawyers, to determine whether it matched material on the
dress Ms. Carroll said she was wearing during the encounter.
Susan C. Beachy
contributed research.
