Attorney General William Barr yet again is acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, using the Department of Justice to protect IMPOTUS.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the DOJ has taken the extraordinary step of intervening in the defamation lawsuit brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll who alleges that Trump raped her more than two decades ago in a dressing room at a New York City department store.
The DOJ filing in federal court in Manhattan removes the case for now from a New York State civil court.
Carroll, who had been an advice columnist at Elle magazine for over 20 years, sued Trump for defamation. She alleged that Trump had damaged her reputation and career — she lost her job at Elle — by claiming she was lying and took money from political opponents to fabricate the rape claim. Trump has denied ever meeting Carroll.
Trump’s defense team had been on the losing end of a series of rulings by the state court judge. Last month, the judge rejected Trump’s bid for a delay and his argument that he was immune from a lawsuit. The judge’s ruling meant that Trump would soon have been required to produce documents, give a DNA sample and sit for a deposition. Carroll was seeking the DNA sample to compare it to male genetic material found on a black dress she wore during the alleged department store encounter.
The DOJ filing asserted that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States” when he denied Carroll’s rape accusation in interviews in 2019. The filings if upheld would make the the U.S. government rather than Trump the defendant in the case.
CNN legal analyst and University of Texas law school professor Steve Vladeck said if the Justice Department is allowed to take over the case it could mean the end of Carroll’s lawsuit because the federal government can’t be sued for defamation.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Trump had spent $58.4 million in campaign donations for legal and compliance fees, including payments to law firms in cases protecting his own interests. Using campaign donations to pay legal expenses is allowed by campaign finance law.
But now in an even more audacious move, DOJ lawyers would in effect be assisting in Trump’s defense in the defamation lawsuit, which would mean that taxpayers would be footing the bill for Trump’s defense.
In a statement, Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, sharply criticized the DOJ filing, the Washington Post reported.
“Realizing that there was no valid basis to appeal that decision in the New York courts, on the very day that he would have been required to appeal, Trump instead enlisted the U.S. Department of Justice to replace his private lawyers and argue that when he lied about sexually assaulting our client, explaining that she ‘wasn’t his type,’ he was acting in his official capacity as President of the United States,” Kaplan said. “Even in today’s world, that argument is shocking. It offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen.”
The Post reported that Carroll issued a statement that the DOJ’s actions “demonstrate that Trump will do everything possible, including using the full powers of the federal government, to block discovery from going forward in my case before the upcoming election to try to prevent a jury from ever deciding which one of us is lying.”
“But Trump underestimates me, and he also has underestimated the American people,” Carroll said in her statement.
The DOJ filing said Barr has the authority under federal law to move such a case to federal court if he certifies a federal employee was acting within the scope of their job during an incident, the Post reported.
A federal judge will now have to decide whether to grant the DOJ’s request to make the U.S. government the defendant in the case.
Another CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called the filing “a wild stretch by DOJ.”
"I can't remotely conceive how DOJ can argue with a straight face that it is somehow within the official duties of the President to deny a claim that he committed sexual assault years before he took office," Honig said.
Honig said the filing “is very much consistent with Barr’s well-established pattern of distorting fact and law to protect Trump and his allies,” citing such actions as Barr’s handling of the Mueller report and the cases of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
What is certain is that the DOJ filing will stall Carroll’s case for months — well past the November election — since any ruling on it will likely be appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.