The US Justice Department is seeking to take over President Donald Trump's defence in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who accused him of rape, and federal lawyers today asked a court to allow a move that could put the American people on the hook for any money she might be awarded.
After New York state courts turned down Trump's request to delay E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers filed court papers today aiming to shift the case into federal court and to substitute the US for Trump as the defendant. That means the federal government, rather than Trump himself, might have to pay damages if any are awarded.
The filing complicates, at least for the moment, Carroll's efforts to get a DNA sample from the president as potential evidence and to have him answer questions under oath.
Justice Department lawyers argue that Trump was "acting within the scope of his office" when he denied Carroll's allegations, made last year, that he raped her in a New York luxury department store in the mid-1990s. She says his comments — including that she was "totally lying" to sell a memoir — besmirched her character and harmed her career.
