CNN
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The Department of Justice he has reversed course and said he no longer believes that Donald Trump should be entitled to immunity for his response to the sexual assault allegation of E. Jean Carroll, allowing the civil lawsuit to proceed to trial in January.
The change in position removes a legal hurdle surrounding Carroll’s 2019 defamation lawsuit against Trump over statements he made when he was president, denying her rape allegation decades earlier, that he did not know about it and that it was not his.” type”. That lawsuit is separate from the sexual assault and defamation case that went to trial this year and resulted in a jury awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
DOJ lawyers said in a letter to lawyers for Trump and Carroll that “the Department has determined that it does not have adequate evidence” to conclude that the former president was acting within the scope of his employment or providing service to the government of the USA “when he denied sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll and made the other statements about Ms. Carroll that he has challenged in this action.”
The Justice Departments of the Trump and Biden administrations initially said Trump was acting within the scope of his duties when he answered questions from reporters in 2019 about Carroll’s allegations. This essentially meant that the Department of Justice would be substituted as a defendant and the case would likely be dismissed.
The case has been held up on appeal over what constitutes the scope of the employees’ duties until a court in Washington, DC, provided guidance this spring, sending the case to the judge. The DOJ had until Thursday to declare its position. Attorneys for Trump and Carroll will also have the opportunity to speak.
Also, in a separate lawsuit filed by Carroll last year under a New York law allowing civil sexual assault allegations to be reviewed for a year, a federal jury found in May that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awarded him $5 million for battery and defamation. Trump, who is appealing the decision, does not face any prison time as a result of the civil verdict.
In light of the developments, the Justice Department said its position had changed.
Justice Department lawyers said they took into account Trump’s statement that was interpreted in the battery and defamation trial, as well as statements Trump made last October repeating the denials long after he left office , as an indication that he was not motivated to protect and serve the US when he first made the comments.
Justice Department lawyers wrote that after balancing and weighing the evidence “from Mr. Trump’s statement, the jury verdict in Carroll II, and the new allegations in the amended complaint, the Department has determined that already there is no sufficient basis to conclude that the former president was motivated by a “more than insignificant” desire to serve the United States government,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
“And a jury has found that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll long before he became president. This story supports an inference that Mr. Trump was motivated by a ‘personal grievance’ stemming from events that occurred many years before Mr. Trump’s presidency,” the Justice Department wrote.
The judge has scheduled the trial for January, at the start of the presidential primary season.
Trump responded to the Justice Department’s social media rollback on Wednesday, calling it “all part of the political witch hunt.”
Trump’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said they are “grateful that the Department of Justice has reconsidered its position.”
“We have always believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of personal animosity, ill will and spite, and not as the President of the United States,” Kaplan said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
