The Justice Department on Tuesday backed down from its argument that Donald Trump couldn’t be sued for comments he made about E. Jean Carroll from the White House.
Government officials revealed their determination in a letter to Trump’s lawyers and a Manhattan federal court filing to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presides over Carroll’s two lawsuits against Trump.
Carroll prevailed on both of her claims in the second suit at trial in May, winning $5 million in damages from the jury that found Trump sexually abused her inside a Bergdorf Goodman changing room in Midtown in 1996 and defamed her when she spoke out decades later.
Complicated legal stumbling blocks have bogged down the first suit since Carroll filed it in 2019. Trump and his DOJ argued he was immune from being sued for anything he said about her as president when she first accused him of sexual assault. President Biden’s DOJ supported that position when he took office, saying it was defending federal employees’ right not to be sued, not the alleged specific conduct.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton told Trump’s lawyers the DOJ had changed its mind, lacking “adequate evidence” showing then-President Trump was acting as president when he called Carroll a “liar” from the White House and infamously denied the assault because she was “not my type.”
“The evidence of Mr. Trump’s state of mind, some of which has come to light only after the Department last made a certification decision, does not establish that he made the statements at issue with a ‘more than insignificant’ purpose to serve the United States Government,” Boynton wrote.
“No direct evidence of the former President’s state of mind in making these statements is available.”
The determination all but clears the way for Carroll’s first lawsuit to proceed to trial early in 2024.
“We are grateful that the Department of Justice has reconsidered its position. We have always believed that Donald…
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