Donald Trump’s Justice Department will push the Supreme Court to allow it to interfere in the $83.3 million judgement granted to E. Jean Carroll in her defamation suit against the president.
According to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg, the DOJ is hoping the court will bless a plea to swap Trump with the federal government as the party responsible for the judgement. The government cannot be sued for defamation, however, which means that if the Supreme Court allows the DOJ to substitute itself for the president, the case would be dismissed and Trump would be let off the hook.
The DOJ is arguing that it should be able to step in because Trump, it claims, was acting as a government employee when he defamed Carroll.
It’s yet another example of the Trump administration working on behalf of Trump rather than the American people. The DOJ seems to be functioning as a tool for Trump to carry out his personal vendettas. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recently announced, for example, that he was bringing charges against former FBI Director James Comey over Comey posting an “86 47” message in seashells to social media. Trump has also sought to use the DOJ to enrich himself. Last year, he demanded the department fork over $230 million of taxpayer funds in order to compensate him for the inconvenience of being subjected to various criminal probes related to his first presidency.
In 2019, Carroll came forward with allegations that the president sexually assaulted her in a department store during the 1990s. In a series of cases, a jury in a civil trial found Trump liable for sexual assault, and determined that the then-former president had repeatedly defamed Carroll in his public attacks against her. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in 2023, and, in a separate judgement, $83.3 million in early 2024.
Trump has repeatedly attempted to have the judgements overturned. Last week, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s attempt to claim presidential immunity from the judgement. “The fact of the matter is that no other defendant would be permitted to move to substitute the United States in his place, 15 months after trial and the entry of judgment against him,” the court wrote in its decision.
For her part, Carroll has stated that she intends to use the money she receives from the president for philanthropic causes, and will be the subject of a new documentary titled Ask E. Jean — set to be released later this month — about her career as a columnist and her legal battle against the president.
