E. Jean Carroll walks outdoors Manhattan Federal Court docket, for the second civil trial after she accused former U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her a long time in the past, in New York Metropolis, U.S., January 25, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
President Donald Trump and the Division of Justice on Tuesday individually requested the Supreme Court docket to overturn a civil court docket verdict that ordered him to pay the author E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her whereas denying her declare that he sexually assaulted her in a New York division retailer dressing room within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
“That is the primary case in our Nation’s historical past through which a court docket has imposed damages legal responsibility on a President for his conduct in workplace,” the petition to the Supreme Court docket by Trump’s attorneys says.
His attorneys declare that Trump has immunity from the defamation declare as a result of he made the feedback about Carroll in 2019, when he was president. Of their submitting, the attorneys say {that a} 2024 Supreme Court docket ruling in Trump’s favor required the decision within the Carroll case to be overturned.
The Supreme Court docket’s ruling in 2024 discovered that presidents have immunity for official acts, and that “most of a President’s public communications” are official acts.
“Right here, the President of america has been ordered to pay almost $100 million in damages — together with post-judgment curiosity — for issuing a press launch and answering reporters’ questions, from the White Home, defending in opposition to assaults on his health for workplace,” Trump’s petition says.
The DOJ’s petition echoes one other argument made by Trump’s petition: that the DOJ ought to have been allowed to substitute the U.S. authorities for Trump because the defendant within the lawsuit as a result of he was president on the time he made the statements about Carroll.
If that swap had been allowed, the case would have been dismissed as a result of beneath the Westfall Act, federal staff are shielded from sure civil claims for conduct carried out in the midst of their duties, together with defamation.
The 2 petitions come a month after the Supreme Court docket rejected Trump’s request that it hear his attraction of a $5 million verdict in favor of Carroll in a separate, however associated, civil case.
Carroll two weeks in the past acquired that cash, along with greater than $600,000 in curiosity, from a court docket fund the place Trump had deposited funds to safe the decision.
Regardless of that, Trump has launched a longshot effort to get the Supreme Court docket to rethink its refusal to listen to his attraction of the decision in that case.
In that case, a Manhattan federal court docket jury in Might 2023 discovered that Trump was accountable for having sexually abused Carroll within the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman division retailer within the Nineteen Nineties, and for defaming her in late 2022 when he made statements denying her allegations.
Within the second case, which is the topic of the brand new petition to the Supreme Court docket, one other Manhattan federal court docket jury in January 2024 discovered Trump civilly accountable for defaming Carroll in 2019 when she went public together with her declare that Trump had raped her within the dressing room.
That verdict, with its $83.3 million award, was upheld by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court docket of Appeals.
Trump’s attorneys, of their petition on Tuesday, stated the 2nd Circuit “wrongly held that President Trump had by some means forfeited the protection of Presidential immunity solely as a result of his first responsive pleading didn’t invoke Presidential immunity by title, despite the fact that President Trump repeatedly invoked that immunity, together with in his reply to the amended criticism and his movement for abstract judgment.”
