President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice filed a brief Monday extending cover to former President Donald Trump in a defamation case.
Author and columnist E. Jean Carroll filed the suit against the then-president in late 2019, following his public denials of the rape allegations she had previously raised against him.
Trump’s Justice Department moved to replace his personal legal team and have the suit transferred to a federal court in late 2020. The new brief from the Biden administration takes up the Trump-era argument, claiming that statements the 45th president made about Carroll were “crude and disrespectful” but still “within the scope of his office.”
“The President is an ‘employee of the government,'” Justice Department lawyers wrote in the new brief. “Nothing in the text, purpose, or history of the statutes suggests that they exempt from their coverage the President of the United States.”
The lawyers added that Trump’s statements denying Carroll’s claims, while undoubtedly “crude and disrespectful,” still fell “within the scope” of his office at the time and should therefore be defended by the Justice Department.
via joemiller