US Justice Department loses bid to replace Trump as defendant in rape defamation lawsuit

E Jean Carroll accused the president of raping her in a department store in the 1990s

E. Jean Carroll, who says President Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s, leaves the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse following a hearing in her defamation lawsuit against Trump, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, in New York. A federal judge on Tuesday denied President Donald Trump's request that the United States replace him as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped a woman in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
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A US court ruled that President Donald Trump will remain the defendant in a defamation case stemming from a 1990s rape allegation.

The federal judge rejected an argument from the Justice Department that sought to have the federal government step in to replace the president as the defendant in the case.

Mr Trump is not immune from being tried as a private citizen, ruled Judge Lewis A Kaplan of the federal district court in Manhattan.

The case revolved around the federal tort claims act, a law that protects federal employees from being sued for work done during their tenure in the White House.

Judge Kaplan ruled that the law did not apply to Mr Trump as he was not an “employee of the government,” and added that even if the law applied, “President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms Carroll would not have been within the scope of his employment.”

The case was brought forward by columnist E Jean Carroll, who has accused Mr Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.

The judge’s ruling means her defamation lawsuit will proceed. She claims the president harmed her reputation when he denied the attack last year and called her a liar.

Lawyers for Ms Carroll argued that “only in a world gone mad could it somehow be presidential, not personal, for Trump to slander a woman who he sexually assaulted”.

Ms Carroll went public with the rape allegation last year, detailing in her memoir that a chance encounter with Mr Trump in the mid-nineties led to him pushing her against a wall and raping her in a department store dressing room.

Mr Trump has denied the allegation and accused the former Elle columnist of lying to sell her memoir.

She’s “not my type”, he said.

Mr Trump claimed to have never met Ms Carroll, but a 1987 photo shows them at a social event with their then-spouses. He said the photo was taken while he was in a queue.

The attempt by the Justice Department to intervene in the case was viewed by critics as an attempt from Attorney General Bill Barr to protect the president.