On Tuesday, DOJ reversed its position that Trump could not be sued for remarks he made about E. Jean Carroll while he was in the White House.
A letter to Trump’s lawyers and a Manhattan federal court filing to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversees Carroll’s two lawsuits against Trump, revealed the government’s decision.
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In the second suit, which went to trial in May, Carroll won on both of her claims, receiving $5 million in damages from the jury that found Trump had sex with her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room in Midtown in 1996 and slandered her when she spoke out decades later.
Since Carroll filed the first lawsuit in 2019, it has been held up by complicated legal obstacles. When she first accused him of sexual assault, Trump and his DOJ argued that he could not be sued for anything he said about her as president.
When President Joe Biden took office, the DOJ supported that position, claiming that it was defending the right of federal employees not to be sued, not the alleged specific conduct.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton told Trump’s lawyers the DOJ had changed its mind, lacking “adequate evidence” showing then-President Trump was going about as president when he considered Carroll a “liar” from the White House and scandalously denied the attack since she was “not my type.”
Boynton wrote, “The evidence of Mr. Trump’s state of mind, some of which have only come to light after the Department made the last decision on certification, does not establish that he made the statements at issue with a’more than insignificant’ purpose to serve the United States Government.”
“There is no direct evidence of the former President’s mental state at the time of these statements.”
The decision almost guarantees that Carroll’s first lawsuit will go to trial in early 2024.
We appreciate the Department of Justice’s rethinking of its position. Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, stated, “We have always believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of personal animus, ill will, and spite, and not as president.” Since one of the last hindrances has been eliminated, we anticipate preliminary.”
A request for clarification was not immediately met with a response from Trump’s lawyer.
