E. Jean Carroll asserted that she had been raped in the 1990s and accused the president of defaming her
A federal judge has determined that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, cannot use the Government, specifically the Department of Justice, to defend himself against accusations of defamation of a woman who had denounced alleged sexual abuse that occurred in the middle of the the nineties.
The fashion columnist E. Jean Carroll aired in June 2019 these alleged abuses, which would have occurred between the fall of 1995 and the spring of 1996. According to her version, she met Trump in New York and he asked her to accompany her to buying a gift, which led them both to a lingerie store where the assault allegedly took place, inside a fitting room.
The president denied the abuses on several occasions. “Firstly, he’s not my type; secondly, he never happened,” he said one of those times in statements to reporters, prompting Carroll to file a libel complaint on the grounds that Trump was knowingly denying the facts. that they were true and had questioned his reputation.
Trump decided to appeal to the Department of Justice, which presented as the main argument that federal laws do not allow accusing public authorities of defamation. Judge Lewis Kaplan has responded, however, that this shield does not cover the president and has spoiled the intervention of the Government, since the facts in question are not related to the stage or function of Trump as president, according to NBC News.
“They have nothing to do with the activity of the Government,” Kaplan wrote, who also pointed out that accepting the thesis of the Department of Justice would imply that “a president is free to defame anyone who criticizes his conduct”, without any kind of shortcut.
The court ruling keeps Carroll’s lawsuit alive, which has celebrated Kaplan’s position. “As the judge has recognized today, the question about whether the president raped me 20 years ago in a store is the center of this complaint,” the journalist said in a statement, who trusts that “the truth will come to light.” , according to the Bloomberg agency.
