Accused rapist and current Oval Office occupant, Donald Trump’s, attempt to use the taxpayer-funded resources of the United States Department of Justice to defend himself against a defamation suit brought against him by his alleged victim, former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, has been rebuked by the federal judge overseeing that case.
As reported by The Guardian:
A federal judge on Tuesday denied Donald Trump’s request that he be replaced as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped a woman in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
The decision by US district judge Lewis A Kaplan came after the justice department argued that the United States – and by extension US taxpayers – should replace Trump as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E Jean Carroll.
The rape allegation stems from an alleged assault by Trump on Carroll that occurred in in the mid-1990s. Carroll alleges:
[T]hat Mr. Trump had thrown her up against the wall of a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store in Manhattan, in late 1995 or early 1996. Then, she claimed, Mr. Trump pulled down her tights, opened his pants and forced himself on her. She also insisted that security cameras captured both of them moving together before the alleged assault inside the store.
Carroll claims she retained the dress she was wearing at the time of the alleged assault. Her attorneys have formally requested a DNA sample from Trump (which could presumably be argued as evidence exonerating him, rendering the defamation lawsuit moot). Thus far Trump has refused to provide a DNA sample.
The DOJ inserted itself in this case at the direction of US Attorney General William Barr. Trump’s assigned Justice Department lawyer, however, did not appear personally to argue the issue, having been “banned from a Manhattan federal courthouse last week because he had not quarantined for two weeks after traveling to New York from a state on a list of those whose coronavirus test rates were high.”
Accordingly, the court relied upon the written submissions of the parties.
Trump’s lawyer had contended in written briefs that Trump’s attempt to slander Ms. Carroll’s reputation in response to the credible averments of Trump assaulting and raping her, which Carroll subsequently set forth in detail in a book excerpted in New York Magazine, constituted an official function of his office as president, thus entitling Trump to intervention of the DOJ and thus a legal defense paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
The government’s lawyers contended that the United States could step in as the defendant because Trump was forced to respond to her lawsuit to prove he was physically and mentally fit for the job.
The judge ruled that a law protecting federal employees from being sued individually for things they do within the scope of their employment didn’t apply to a president. But even if it did, Kaplan ruled, Trump’s public denials of the rape allegation would have come outside the scope of his employment.
As noted by ABC News, United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump’s argument, apparently favoring the position put forth in response by Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge):
“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,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote earlier this month in a legal brief.
It’s not clear whether the Justice Department intends to appeal the court’s decision. Assuming it does, the issue could conceivably wind its way to the Supreme Court, to be decided by another accused (attempted) rapist, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and his colleague, accused sexual harasser, Justice Clarence Thomas.