Trump loses immunity in E. Jean Carroll case as Justice Department now says his comments weren't part of presidential role

• The Justice Department is no longer defending Donald Trump in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.
• That means he needs to go to trial again, scheduled for January 2024.
• The DOJ says Trump wasn't acting in a presidential capacity when he denied raping Carroll.

The Justice Department will no longer stand in the way of a second trial between E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump, abandoning its legal position that Trump was acting in a presidential capacity when he denied raping her.

The move, articulated by a Justice Department lawyer in a court filing Tuesday afternoon, means that Trump will once again go to trial, in January 2024, over allegations that he defamed the former Elle magazine columnist.

"Although the statements themselves were made in a work context, the allegations that prompted the statements related to a purely personal incident: an alleged sexual assault that occurred decades prior to Mr. Trump's Presidency," a Justice Department lawyer wrote in a Tuesday court filing. "That sexual assault was obviously not job-related."

Trump already lost a civil defamation case brought by Carroll earlier this year.

In May, a jury in Manhattan federal court found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s and then defamed her when he called her a liar, awarding her $5 million in damages. Trump is appealing the verdict.

That trial was for a second lawsuit brought by Carroll in November 2022, after Trump had left the office of the presidency, for comments he posted on Truth Social insulting Carroll and calling her a liar.

Carroll sued Trump for the first time in 2019, during his presidency. In June of that year, she went public with her rape allegations against Trump and sued him for defamation when he denied her claims and lashed out at her.

But the Justice Department intervened.

It claimed that Trump was acting within the scope of his presidential duties when he denied Carroll's rape allegations. Under the Westfall Act, that would have made Trump immune from the lawsuit. Carroll's attorneys argued against the designation, which gummed up the lawsuit in appeals courts for years.

The DOJ says Trump was motivated by 'personal grievance'

In Tuesday's filing, Justice Department lawyer Brian Boynton wrote that Trump's own actions demonstrated that he was acting in his own personal interest — not in the interest of the United States government — when he denied Carroll's allegations. In light of an appeals court ruling clarifying the scope of the Westfall Act, he wrote, the Justice Department would no longer argue that Trump was under its protection.

Trump insulted Carroll's appearance and called her politically motivated rather than just denying her claims, Boynton pointed out in his letter. Trump also made statements about Carroll after he left the office of the presidency, demonstrating he wasn't acting in just a presidential role when he spoke about Carroll, Boynton wrote.

There is also the fact that the jury found Trump sexually assaulted Carroll well before he ever assumed office.

"A jury has now found that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll long before he became President," Boynton wrote. "That history 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."

Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan said she was "grateful" the Justice Department reconsidered its position.

"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 a 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."

After the Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual assault in May, Trump continued to deny the allegations and called Carroll a liar, leading her to add additional defamation allegations to her still-pending lawsuit.

Trump's lawyers, too, have filed a countersuit against Carroll.

While the jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll by inserting his fingers into her vagina, it didn't find him liable for rape. Under the relevant New York laws, rape involves inserting his penis into her vagina, not his fingers. Trump's countersuit alleges that Carroll defamed him when, in an interview, she appeared to maintain that Trump raped her.

"Trump alleges that Carroll defamed him and caused him 'inordinate' harm by implying in a post-trial interview that when he sexually assaulted her, he not only used his fingers, but also his penis," Carroll's lawyers wrote in a filing Tuesday asking the judge to dismiss the claims. "While that might read like an article penned by Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker or by a writer at the Onion, it's actually the theory of the counterclaim that Trump now purports to assert in this action."

Because Carroll's case is civil rather than criminal, Trump won't have to personally show up in court. He nonetheless has a busy docket as he runs in the 2024 presidential election as he defends two criminal indictments and numerous other civil suits.