A federal judge Tuesday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to make the U.S. government the defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says President Trump raped her decades ago, paving the way for the case to again proceed.
In a 59-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote that Trump did not qualify as a government “employee” under federal law, nor was he acting “within the scope of his employment” when he denied during interviews in 2019 that he had raped journalist E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store during the 1990s.
Carroll sued Trump over that denial in New York in November, and last month the Justice Department moved the case to federal court and asked a judge to substitute the U.S. government as the defendant. The department argued Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States” when he disputed Carroll’s allegations. Continue reading.