Donald Trump has lashed out at the Department of Justice after the federal agency ruled that the former president is not immune from a $10 million defamation lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump once again accused the Biden administration of having "weaponized" the DoJ against him, hours after the department wrote a letter to his lawyers stating that the comments he made while president denying that he sexually assaulted the former Elle columnist in the mid-1990s could not be considered acting within the scope of office.
The defamation lawsuit was filed in 2019, and is separate from the civil case in which a New York jury ruled in May that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, then defaming her character while denying the accusations.
The decision from the DoJ means that the federal agency will not substitute itself as the defendant, effectively ending Carroll's case as the government cannot be sued for defamation, and that the former president must defend himself in the case and is at risk of being found liable for defaming Carroll once again.
In its letter to Trump's lawyers, the DoJ said Trump's comments appear to have come from a "personal grievance" against Carroll, and therefore do not fall under the former president's official duties in office.
"Crooked Joe Biden's Targeted, Weaponized DOJ & FBI are a grave threat to our Democracy! They are doing Crooked's DIRTY WORK in attacking and persecuting 'TRUMP,' and only doing so because I am CRUSHING DeSanctimonious and Biden in the Polls," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"This is planned Election Interference of the highest magnitude, and used to only happen in Third World Countries. Now, sadly and terribly, it is happening right here in America, and must be stopped if our Country is to survive."
The lawsuit which the DoJ now said Trump is not immune from focuses on 2019 comments Trump made while he was in the White House, including telling The Hill that the assault could not have occurred as "she's not my type."
After the New York jury ruled in her favor in the sexual battery lawsuit, Carroll amended the 2019 suit to include comments Trump gave to a CNN town hall the following night in which the former president insulted his accuser as a "whack job" and claimed the attack was a "made-up story."
Despite the DoJ under both the Trump and Biden administrations previously stating that Trump was acting in his official capacity while denying Carroll's assault allegations in 2019, the DoJ has now ruled that "prior history" between Carroll and Trump suggests that the former president's statements were not "sufficiently motivated by a purpose" to serve the government.
"A jury has now found that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll long before he became president. That history supports an inference that Mr. Trump was motivated by a 'personal grievance' stemming from events that occurred many years prior to Mr. Trump's presidency," the DoJ wrote.
In a tweet reacting to the ruling, Lisa Rubin, an attorney and legal analyst for MSNBC, wrote: "The long and short of it is DOJ won't be coming to his rescue to substitute the United States as a defendant and thereby make this case go away.
"Trump alone must defend the case about his 2019 statements, just as he did in the case about his 2022 statement."
The DoJ has been contacted for comment.
