President Donald Trump.Alex Brandon / AP
Lawyers for the Justice Department will put themselves at the service of the President of the United States in a defamation case against him, a move in which critics see a new example of how the Republican Administration forces the arm of Attorney General William Barr to defend Donald Trump's personal interests.
Unless a federal judge rules against it, the United States government will be the defendant, rather than the president, in a defamation case stemming from the accusation made last year by writer and columnist E. Jean Carroll that the president He raped her in a well-known New York department store in the 1990s.
The lawsuit is based on the fact that the president, according to Carroll, lied by saying that he did not know her and assured that the violation never occurred and that it could not have occurred because Carroll was not her "type."
The Justice Department argues that Trump's comments were made while he was in the exercise of his duties in the White House as president, so that the Administration's attorneys should assume his defense instead of his private lawyers.
This has two immediate consequences: that the US taxpayer will pay the costs of this process and, most importantly, that the Department of Justice cannot be sued for defamation, so the case would die immediately.
TO DONALD J. TRUMP
Sir, I and my attorney Robbie Kaplan, are ready!
So is every woman who has ever been silenced!
So is every American citizen who has been trampled by Bill Barr and the DOJ!
BRING IT! @Kaplanrobbie @ JoshuaMatz8https: //t.co/ebwkZJQTyD
- E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) September 8, 2020
In the publication of a book last year, the famous 76-year-old columnist recounted six sexual assaults that she allegedly was the victim of by different men, including the real estate mogul who would later become the 45th president of the United States.
Trump denied the accusations with derogatory statements that led to the defamation complaint of Carroll, who could not bring the president to court for rape because that alleged crime had already prescribed.
“Even in today's world, the argument [that Justice does] is surprising to say the least.
It offends me as a lawyer, but it offends me even more as a citizen.
Trump's efforts to use the power of the US Government to evade responsibility for private misconduct is unprecedented and shows even more obviously how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from being known. " stated Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan.
TRUMP HURLS BILL BARR AT ME.
Just when @realDonaldTrump is required to produce documents and DNA in discovery, he sics the DOJ on us.
THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED !!
My attorney, @kaplanrobbie, and I are happy to TAKE THEM ALL ON!
@realDonaldTrump https://t.co/rAmKnqpo5s
- E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) September 8, 2020
In institutional terms, the Justice Department's decision is almost unprecedented in US history,
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas
, reports to
The New York Times
.
According to Vladeck, you have to go back to 2005 to find a similar case.
A federal court in Washington then ruled that government attorneys could defend Cass Ballenger, a Republican lawmaker from North Carolina who had been denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
But it was a congressman, not the president of the United States.
In his particular use of justice, last month, Trump hinted in an interview with the
Fox
network
that if Attorney General William Barr wanted to go down as one of the greats, what he had to do was investigate former President Barack Obama and his number two, Joe Biden, today his opponent in the race for the White House, for the Russian plot.
Barr confirmed shortly after that neither man is under the prosecution's scrutiny.
Carroll says she keeps the dress she was wearing when the assault occurred in the exclusive Bergdorf Goodman fitting room and that it could be used to obtain DNA evidence implicating the president.
With 54 days before the presidential elections of November 3 in which Trump is at stake for re-election, the return to the headlines of another act of sexism and violence against women could harm the Republican campaign, which is why he would be trying throw balls out and remove the focus of the complaint.
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