DOJ Says Trump's Rants About E. Jean Carroll Were Not Part Of His Job. Trump Responds With Further Ranting.

(Photo by Ali Shaker/VOA)

Yesterday Donald Trump had a bad day in court. Today he woke up and made sure his lawyers also had a bad day.

Those two sentences could have been written virtually any day in the past seven years, of course. But Trump's commitment to shooting himself in the foot in the E. Jean Carroll case over and over in exactly the same way is truly impressive.

On the heels of a $5 million jury verdict for sexual assault and defamatory comments he made about the advice columnist in 2022, repeating defamatory comments he made about her in 2019, he took to social media this morning to repeat the comments again.

Behold, the ouroboros of defamation!

Page 1: The DOJ will not defend me in the E. Jean Carroll civil case, which is all part of the political Witch Hunt, lawyered up by a political operative who I just beat in another case, financed by a big political funder, and "judged" by a Clinton appointee who truly hates "TRUMP." The statements that I made about Carroll are all true. I didn't Rape her (I won that at trial) and other than for this case, I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS, WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE, OR ANYTHING ABOUT HER....

Page 2: The Carroll civil case against me is a Miscarriage of Justice and a total Scam. The trial was very unfair, with the other side being able to do and present virtually anything they wanted, and our side being largely and wrongfully shut down by an absolutely hostile, biased, and out of control judge. My lawyers, due to their respect for the Office of the President and the incredulity of the case, did not want me to testify, or even be at the trial.....

Page 3: The net result of this horrible INJUSTICE, where a completely unknown to me woman made up a ridiculous story, wrote it in a book to increase publicity and sales, I correctly disputed the story and got sued for Defamation, whereupon a hostile Judge and Jury shockingly awarded a woman who I don't know, have never known, and don't want to know, $5,000,000, while at the same time throwing out the Fake Rape claim. WE ARE STRONGLY APPEALING THIS TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE!!!

The former president appears to have been set off by the Justice Department's retreat from its prior position that Trump was acting within the scope of his official duties when he made the original 2019 statements slagging Carroll in exactly the same fashion he did this morning. Her first defamation case was originally filed in state court, but after a year in which Trump ducked process and asserted various bogus defenses, Attorney General Bill Barr swooped in and removed the case to federal court under the Westfall Act.

That set off a further three years of wrangling, with Judge Lewis Kaplan finding that Trump was not acting within the scope of his official duties and Trump appealing to the Second Circuit. The appellate court then punted the question to the DC Court of Appeals, which made no dispositive determination. On the eve of the trial re Trump's 2022 comments, the DC judges returned the case to Judge Kaplan, instructing him to evaluate Trump's purpose and state of mind when deciding whether the 2019 statement was part of his official presidential duties.

The Justice Department, ever protective of executive branch prerogatives, sought mightily to avoid weighing in. But after being ordered -- twice! -- to state whether it still stood behind its original Westfall claim, the DOJ finally tapped out yesterday. In a letter signed by Principal Deputy AG Brian Boynton, the government withdrew its effort to substitute the United States as defendant, something which would be fatal to Carroll's case, since the government has not waived its sovereign immunity to defamation suits.

Noting that a sexual assault in the mid-90s was "obviously not job-related," the government declared yesterday that Trump was "insufficiently actuated by a public purpose, to justify a finding that he was acting within the scope of his employment." Similarly, the jury's finding that Trump did indeed sexually assault Carroll "supports an inference that Mr. Trump was motivated by a 'personal grievance' stemming from events that occurred many years prior to Mr. Trump's presidency."

Finally, the government observes that Trump's constant rants about Carroll after leaving office "undermine the claim that the former President made very similar statements at issue in Carroll I out of a desire to serve the Government," something Trump once again confirmed this morning.

In addition to all this, Carroll moved yesterday to dismiss Trump's counterclaim against her filed on June 27. Trump's minions have tried mightily to spin the jury's verdict as a win because it found him liable for sexual assault, but not rape. Lawyer Alina Habba, who just announced that she is taking a job with Trump's Save America PAC, alleged that Carroll defamed Trump in an interview on CNN after the verdict. Asked by reporter Poppy Harlow how she felt when the jury announced that it did not find Trump liable for rape, Carroll responded "Well, I just immediately (said) in my own head, 'Oh, yes, he did. Oh yes, he did.'" She also claimed to have told Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina, "he did it. And you know it."

Trump, who promised during his deposition that he would sue both Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, seeks to add those claims to this case. But yesterday Carroll urged the court to reject this attempt, arguing that the first statement is a fair report of her subjective reaction, and the "it" in the second statement is too unclear to be actionable.

The motion to dismiss Trump's counterclaim, along with consideration of the DOJ's Westfall letter, are now before the "absolutely hostile, biased, and out of control judge."

Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan tells ATL: "We have always believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of personal animus, ill will, and spite, and not as President of the United States. Now that one of the last obstacles has been removed, we look forward to trial in E Jean Carroll's original case in January 2024."

Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.