President Trump and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are petitioning the Supreme Court to review writer E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation award she won after accusing the president of sexual assault.
The administration wants to invoke a law that allows the federal government to step in when one of its employees stares down a lawsuit over something within the scope of their job.
If successful, Trump would no longer be on the hook for the damages. A lower court denied the effort as well as Trump’s presidential immunity defense.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office. That alone deserves this Court’s attention,” the DOJ wrote in court filings.
The Hill reviewed a copy of both petitions, which have not been publicly docketed at the Supreme Court. The high court chooses which cases it hears and turns away the vast majority. The justices are set to consider the requests at a closed-door meeting after returning from their summer recess.
Carroll and her legal team declined to comment.
The longtime advice writer took Trump to civil trial twice after coming forward during his first term with accusations that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump denies her story.
At the first trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and later defaming Carroll in 2022 for denying her claims. She won $5 million. The Supreme Court last month declined to take up Trump’s appeal, and the funds were recently transferred to Carroll’s law firm.
The legal fight has now turned to the second trial, in which Carroll won an additional $83.3 million. That case brought additional claims of defamation, but this time, they concerned statements Trump made while president.
That has raised additional questions, as Trump argues the statements in question were part of his official duties. An appeals court rejected the president’s contention, saying he had forfeited the argument by not raising it earlier.
“Because accusations bearing on the President’s fitness for office are unquestionably matters of public concern, Presidential statements responding to press questions about such accusations are plainly official. This Court should say so,” Trump’s personal attorneys wrote in their petition.
The DOJ has told the Supreme Court it doesn’t need to go that far.
It hopes to invoke a 1988 law called the Westfall Act. Aimed at protecting federal employees, the law allows the Justice Department to substitute itself as the defendant when a lawsuit concerns something a government employee did in the scope of their jobs.
After Carroll launched her lawsuit during Trump’s first term, his Justice Department tried to invoke it. The gambit tied up the case in pretrial proceedings for years, only for the Biden-era Justice Department to drop the effort in 2023.
With Trump now back in the White House, his DOJ is trying again. It appealed after a lower court ruled time restrictions prevent another switch so late.
“Here, such respect means that this Court should determine that the last Administration’s abandoned defense of a former President did not justify the Second Circuit’s failure to allow this Administration’s renewed defense of the current President,” the department wrote in its petition.
If the Supreme Court agrees, it would mean taxpayers would be on the hook for any damages, and Trump would effectively be absolved from paying.
