The Department of Justice on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of presidential immunity when he denied E. Jean Carroll's rape allegations while in office.
The "Department of Justice is declining to certify under the Westfall Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d), that defendant Donald J. Trump was acting within the scope of his office and employment as President of the United States when he made the statements that form the basis of the defamation claims," according to a letter attached to Carroll's initial defamation lawsuit from June 2019.
2024 HOPEFULS DEFEND KIM REYNOLDS AFTER TRUMP ATTACK
The notice from the DOJ marks a reversal from its previous standpoint and means that Trump will be on his own in defending the case without any privilege to dismiss the case automatically.
The DOJ had previously certified that Trump was acting in the scope of his employment as president when he made allegedly defamatory statements denying Carroll’s account that Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.
Citing a monthslong legal battle that took place as to whether the original certification was proper, the DOJ wrote it has "determined that it lacks adequate evidence to conclude that the former President was sufficiently actuated by a purpose to serve the United States Government to support a determination that he was acting within the scope of his employment when he denied sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll and made the other statements regarding Ms. Carroll that she has challenged in this action.”
In April, the former magazine columnist convinced a New York jury that Trump owed her $5 million for her sexual abuse and defamation claims.
The DOJ's letter came less than an hour after Carroll filed a motion to dismiss the former president's recent counterclaim lawsuit, calling it an attempt to "spin his loss" while urging a judge to toss out his suit.
Counsel for the former Elle magazine columnist said Trump's countersuit should "be dismissed" after the former president said she caused him "significant" harm by suggesting in a post-trial interview that the assault was also a rape.
"Trump’s 'tit for tat' counterclaim is nothing more than his latest effort to spin his loss at trial," her lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in a Tuesday filing.
Trump, who is seeking a 2024 bid for the Oval Office, sued Carroll on June 27, arguing that she defamed him in her CNN interview following the May 9 verdict where she claimed, "Oh yes he did, oh yes he did" when asked about the jury finding that he did not commit rape.
Attorneys for the former president say Carroll's "repeated falsehoods and defamatory statements" caused "significant harm to his reputation, which, in turn, has yielded an inordinate amount of damages."
The countersuit is part of the first of Carroll's two lawsuits accusing Trump of defamation. Her more recent case, filed after Trump made similar comments after his presidency on his Truth Social platform, resulted in a $5 million verdict for denying that he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, though the jury did not find Trump liable for the alleged rape.
Trump has appealed the $5 million verdict.
Responding to her June 2019 accusation that he raped her, Carroll's first lawsuit, Trump said he did not know Caroll, adding that she wasn't his "type" and that she made the claim to increase sales of her memoir.
Carroll's attorneys argued in the Tuesday filing that her CNN interview quote was not made with actual malice, which would indicate she knew or had reckless disregard for whether the statement was not true.
"Because he is a public figure, the level of fault Trump must show to satisfy is that the allegedly defamatory “statements were made with ‘actual malice,'" Kaplan wrote, adding that Carroll's statement was actually "substantially true" and therefore not defamatory.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages in her initial suit against the former president.
A Jan. 15, 2024, trial is slated before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who handled the previous trial and is unrelated to Carroll's attorney.