Posted on 10/27/2020 10:47:44 AM PDT by Coronal
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York ruled Tuesday that the Justice Department cannot step in to shield President Donald Trump from a libel lawsuit filed by a woman who claims he raped her in a New York City department store more than 20 years ago.
The Justice Department had sought to block the lawsuit, filed by former gossip columnist E. Jean Carroll, by arguing that the president was acting in his official capacity when he told White House reporters that she made up the rape story.
Carroll sued, claiming that his statements branding her a liar damaged her reputation. Because federal law does not permit suing public officials for libel, the government said, the lawsuit should be dismissed.
But U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said in his ruling Tuesday that the government was wrong on two counts. First, he said, the law applies only to federal employees, defined as officers of federal agencies — a description that does not include the president, who is in a different legal status.
Second, the judge said, the president's statements about something that happened more than two decades before are not within the scope of his official conduct.
"President Trump's views on the plaintiff's sexual assault allegation may be interesting to some, but they reveal nothing about the operation of government," Kaplan wrote.
"A comment about government action, public policy, or even an election is categorically different than a comment about an alleged sexual assault that took place roughly twenty years before the president took office," he wrote.
Accepting the government's view, he said, "would mean that a president is free to defame anyone who criticizes his conduct or impugns his character."
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Carroll was acting in her official capacity as a gossip columnist.
A good time to send it up! :-)
GAAAAH! Please provide notice next time you do that!
Whatever... This is still a nuisance suit. Defending yourself against your accuser isn’t libel, it’s opinion. There are zero provable facts, so it’s basically he said/she said.
But these dumb ass judges are going to open the floodgates to more nuisance lawsuits because Orange Man Bad. SMH
..
. . GAAAAH! Pleas provide notice the nex time you do that
The law hasn't been kind to E.Jean.
The law of gravity I mean.
Why would Trump want the DOJ to defend him in the first place?
At the time she made the accusation, that he raped her in a fitting room at BGs, one or more individuals familiar with the store’s operation, stated that it couldn’t have happened. That Bergdorff Goodman tightly controlled the entering and exiting of their fitting rooms, and by whom, and what was taken in or out of those rooms. So the very idea is absurd.
Common sense has left the building!
Leftist judges run roughshod over the Constitution and all other Laws to do whatever they want. I sure hope karma visits this judge. And who could ever rape a woman in a Department Store?? Wouldn’t her screams bring help???
Isn’t this the accusation that duplicates an episode of ‘SVU’?
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