The Justice Department will no longer shield Trump in E. Jean Carroll defamation case

The Justice Department informed a federal court on Tuesday that it will no longer certify that former President Donald Trump was acting within his presidential duties in 2019 when he dismissed rape allegations by writer E. Jean Carroll, telling reporters she was "totally lying" and "not my type." The decision means Trump will have to defend himself in court and Carroll's 2019 defamation case can likely head to trial next January.

For years after Carroll sued Trump for defamation in federal court, the Justice Department sought to make the U.S. government, not Trump, the defendant, using a law called the Westfall Act. That would give Trump absolute immunity from the lawsuit. Whether Trump can be held personally liable and other questions have kept the case tied up in appeals for three years.

Justice Department lawyers told the presiding federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, that several things had changed since the DOJ last argued that Trump's comments were shielded by the Westfall Act. The new facts included Trump's 2022 deposition in a separate New York lawsuit Carroll filed against Trump, the New York jury's decision in May that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, guidance from a District of Columbia appeals court on the parameters of the Westfall Act, and new allegedly defamatory comments Trump made about Carroll after the New York verdict. 

Given these new developments, "there is no longer a sufficient basis to conclude that the former president was motivated by 'more than an insignificant' desire to serve the United States government," the DOJ lawyers said. In fact the "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."

The Justice Department's new position supports Carroll's belief "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," Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan said. "Now that one of the last obstacles has been removed, we look forward to trial." Trump's lawyers did not respond to requests for comments about the pivot.