President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice filed a brief Monday extending cover to former President Donald Trump in a defamation case.
Author and columnist E. Jean Carroll filed the suit against the then-president in late 2019, following his public denials of the rape allegations she had previously raised against him.
Trump’s Justice Department moved to replace his personal legal team and have the suit transferred to a federal court in late 2020. The new brief from the Biden administration takes up the Trump-era argument, claiming that statements the 45th president made about Carroll were “crude and disrespectful” but still “within the scope of his office.”
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MOVES TO DEFEND TRUMP IN CARROLL RAPE DEFAMATION CASE
“The President is an ‘employee of the government,'” Justice Department lawyers wrote in the new brief. “Nothing in the text, purpose, or history of the statutes suggests that they exempt from their coverage the President of the United States.”
The lawyers added that Trump’s statements denying Carroll’s claims, while undoubtedly “crude and disrespectful,” still fell “within the scope” of his office at the time and should therefore be defended by the Justice Department.
“Speaking to the public and the press on matters of public concern is undoubtedly part of an elected official’s job,” the brief read. “Courts have thus consistently and repeatedly held that allegedly defamatory statements made in that context are within the scope of elected officials’ employment — including when the statements were prompted by press inquiries about the official’s private life.”
The White House, which has maintained that the Justice Department will not act as a political arm of the administration, told CNN they received no warning ahead of the Justice Department’s Monday decision.
“The White House was not consulted by DOJ on the decision to file this brief or its contents,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “While we are not going to comment on this ongoing litigation, the American people know well that President Biden and his team have utterly different standards from their predecessors for what qualify as acceptable statements.”
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You can read the Justice Department’s latest brief in its entirety here.
