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The Justice Department will not be allowed to take President Trump’s place as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, as per a federal court ruling, according to Fox News.
Carroll sued for defamation over Trump’s response to her allegations that he raped her in the 1990s.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York wrote an Opinion piece, which read, “President Trump’s comment concerned media reports about an alleged sexual assault that took place more than 20 years before he took office. Neither the media reports nor the underlying allegations have any relationship to his official duties.”
“While the government’s position is not entirely without merit, it goes much too far. Accepting it would mean that a president is free to defame anyone who criticizes his conduct or impugns his character – without adverse consequences to that president and no matter what injury he inflicts on the person defamed.”
“When I spoke out about what Donald Trump did to me in a department store dressing room, I was speaking out against an individual.”
“When Donald Trump called me a liar and denied that he had ever met me, he was not speaking on behalf of the United States,” Carroll said in a statement.
“I am happy that Judge Kaplan recognized these basic truths.”
“As the judge recognized today, the question whether President Trump raped me 20 years ago in a department store is at ‘the heart’ of this lawsuit. We can finally return to answering that question, and getting the truth out.”
From Fox News:
Trump had claimed that he never met Carroll, and accused her of fabricating the allegations to sell her book or to “carry out a political agenda.” The Justice Department cited statutes that call for the United States to replace a government employee in a lawsuit arising over actions carried out in the course of their duties, but the court ruled that those statutes did not apply.
The DOJ had argued that by denying Carroll’s allegations, Trump was making it easier for himself to govern due to the seriousness of the accusation. Kaplan said that the DOJ had waived that argument by waiting too long to make it, but even so, it was not convincing.
