US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan refused to let the government substitute itself for Trump as a defendant in former Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit.
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Carroll had sued Trump last November in a New York state court, after he had denied having raped her in Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s or knowing who she was. Trump said she fabricated the story to sell a new book, and added: “She’s not my type.”
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Acting at the behest of US Attorney General William Barr, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) moved the case to federal court, where it said Trump acted in his official capacity when denying Carroll’s claims, and thus could not be sued personally for defamation.
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Kaplan said a law shielding federal employees from being sued for acts done during their employment did not cover presidents. He also said Trump did not make his statements about Carroll in the scope of his employment as president.
alJazeera
Well, no shit.
“No one even arguably directed or controlled President Trump when he commented on the plaintiff’s accusation, which had nothing to do with the official business of government, that he raped her decades before he took office,” Kaplan wrote in a 61-page decision. “And no one had the ability to control him.”
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A ruling for the government would have shielded Trump from liability and likely doomed Carroll’s defamation claim.
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Carroll’s lawsuit is one of many legal actions Trump faces as he seeks re-election on November 3.
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The DOJ moved the lawsuit to federal court after Justice Verna Saunders of New York state court in Manhattan had in August rejected Trump’s bid to postpone the case.
She said the US Supreme Court’s recent rejection of Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal proceedings while in office applied to state court proceedings involving his unofficial or personal conduct.
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[Judge Kaplan] said [the DOJ's] arguments went “much too far” by leaving Trump “free [to] defame anyone who criticises his conduct or impugns his character”, without consequences for the president and regardless of the harm to his target.
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That ruling could have allowed Carroll’s lawyers to seek a DNA sample from Trump, to match against a dress Carroll said she wore at Bergdorf Goodman.
The DOJ’s intervention put that process on hold.
We'll be looking forward to that process going forward.
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