Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Moms for Liberty meeting in Philadelphia on June 30.
Matt Rourke/AP
The Justice Department said it will decline to shield former President Trump from a defamation claim by New York writer E. Jean Carroll, reversing course on one of its most controversial decisions during the early stretch of the Biden administration.
The department notified attorneys for Trump and Carroll of the move late Tuesday afternoon. In papers filed with a federal judge in New York, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton said DOJ determined that it “lacks adequate evidence to conclude” Trump was serving the federal government and acting within the scope of his employment when he denied he had sexually assaulted Carroll and made other derogatory remarks about her.
The change in course is a significant one. If the Justice Department had decided Trump were covered under a law called the Westfall Act, he would, in essence, have secured immunity from the civil claims. That’s because federal workers are shielded from those kinds of lawsuits so long as the workers are acting within the bounds of their jobs.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said she was grateful for the new position from the department.
“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,” Kaplan said in an emailed statement. “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.”
Lawyers for Trump had no…
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