Donald Trump loses immunity in E. Jean Carroll defamation suit, Justice Department says ‘comments weren't job-related’

The US Justice Department has reversed its stance on Donald Trump's immunity in E. Jean Carroll's defamation lawsuit, clearing the way for the case to proceed to trial in January. Trump had previously denied Carroll's accusation of sexual assault and claimed immunity as the president. However, the department's change in position removes a legal obstacle for Carroll, who sued Trump for defamation based on his statements denying her allegation of rape decades earlier, that he didn’t know her, and that she wasn’t his “type.”

DOJ lawyers told lawyer of both sides that “it no longer believed Trump acted within the scope of his office and employment as president in June 2019, when he denied having raped Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.”

Initially, the Justice Department under Trump and Biden administrations initially claimed that Trump's response to Carroll's allegations fell within his duties. That essentially meant that the Justice Department would be substituted as a defendant and the case would likely be dismissed.

However, its change of heart means it will not try to substitute itself as the defendant, effectively ending Carroll's case because the government cannot be sued for defamation.

Lawyers for the Justice Department wrote that after balancing and weighing the evidence “from Mr. Trump’s deposition, the jury verdict in Carroll II, and the new allegations in the Amended Complaint, the Department has determined that 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,” lawyers for the Justice Department wrote, as citeed by CNN.

“And a jury has now found that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll long before he became President. 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,” the Justice Department wrote.

The judge has scheduled the trial for January, at the start of the presidential primary season.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson of Trump, said, as reported by Reuters, the step showed that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden was "politically weaponising the justice system" against Trump. He dismissed the department's move as "a partisan sham."