Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Hill reports:
The Justice Department on Tuesday said it will no longer defend former President Trump as being immune in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit.
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. But now, the department is reversing its position, leaving Trump on the hook for any potential damages.
DOJ cited the legal battle that ensued as to whether their original certification was proper, which held up the case for months. It bounced between multiple courts in New York and Washington, D.C., ending with no clear resolution.
And in related news:
The writer E. Jean Carroll, who convinced a jury that Donald Trump owed her $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her, asked a judge to dismiss the former U.S. president’s countersuit that she defamed him by repeating her claim that he raped her.
In a Tuesday court filing in Manhattan, Carroll’s lawyers called Trump’s countersuit his latest effort to “spin” his trial loss by claiming she caused him “significant” harm by implying in a post-trial interview that the assault was also a rape.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Garland didn’t just refuse to represent trump in Carroll because they added comments he made after he was president. Garland has concluded that the stuff he said while president WAS NOT WITHIN THE SCOPE OF HIS JOB. 1/
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) July 11, 2023
This is important because I thought Garland would just say “since you added his CNN town hall comments to the case, and he wasn’t president then, we can’t represent him.” But no! They have determined the stuff he said in 2019 isn’t part of his job. HUGE REVERSAL. 2/
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) July 11, 2023