[ad_1]
A federal judge has denied President Donald Trump’s request that the United States replace him as a defendant in a libel lawsuit alleging he raped a woman at a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
District Judge Lewis A Kaplan’s decision came after the U.S. Justice Department argued that the United States, and by extension the American people, should replace Trump as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by columnist E Jean Carroll.
Lawyers for the United States government argued that the United States could intervene as a defendant because Trump was forced to respond to his lawsuit to show that he was physically and mentally fit for the job.
The judge ruled that a law that protects federal employees from being individually sued for things they do within the scope of their employment does not apply to a president.
Judge Kaplan wrote: “The President of the United States is not a government employee within the meaning of the relevant statutes.
“Even if she were such an employee, President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements about Ms. Carroll would not have been within the scope of her employment.
“Consequently, the motion to replace the United States in place of President Trump is rejected.”
Ms. Carroll’s attorneys had written that “only in a world insane could it be in any way presidential, not personal, for Trump to slander a woman he sexually assaulted.”
The Justice Department relied solely on written arguments in the dispute after his attorney was expelled from Manhattan federal court last week because he had not been in quarantine for two weeks after traveling to New York from a listed state. of those whose coronavirus test rates were high.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, said in her lawsuit that in the fall of 1995 or spring of 1996 she and Trump met in a chance meeting when they recognized each other at the Bergdorf Goodman store.
She said they engaged in a lighthearted chat about trying on a sheer lilac gray suit when they headed to a dressing room, where she said Trump pushed her against a wall and raped her.
Trump said Carroll was “totally lying” to sell his memoirs and had never met her, despite a 1987 photo showing them and their then-spouses at a social event.
He said the photo captured a moment when he was standing in a line.
Ms Carroll, who wants unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements, is also seeking a sample of Trump’s DNA to see if it matches the as-yet-unidentified male genetic material found in a dress she says she was wearing during the alleged attack. .
Ms. Carroll has come forward publicly with her claims.
[ad_2]