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June 8 (UPI) -- The Justice Department on Tuesday sought to substitute itself for former President Donald Trump in a defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. Justice Department lawyers said in a brief filed Monday that Trump was acting "within the scope of employment" of the government when he accused Carroll of lying to sell books by alleging that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
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"Then-President Trump's response to Ms. Carroll's serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful," Brian Boyton, acting head of the Justice Department's Civil Division, wrote in the brief. "But this case does not concern whether Mr. Trump's response was appropriate. Nor does it turn on the truthfulness of Ms. Carroll's allegations."
In the briefing, the Justice Department lawyers noted that "speaking to the press on matters of public concern is undoubtedly part of an elected official's job."
"Courts have thus consistently and repeatedly held that allegedly defamatory statements made in that context are within the scope of elected officials' employment -- including when the statements were prompted by press inquiries about the official's private life," they wrote.
The lawyers also acknowledged that Trump's comments about Carroll "attacked her appearance, impugned her motives and implied that she had made false accusations against others" and were ultimate "without question unnecessary and inappropriate."
However, they argued the comments "all pertained to the denial of wrongdoing" and "cannot be clearly severed" from the fact that they remained within the limits of the scope of his employment.
The Justice Department originally attempted to step in for Trump while he was still in office but a federal judge rejected its request to intervene in October.
The White House said it had not been consulted by the Justice Department before the brief was filed.
"The White House was not consulted by DOJ on the decision to file this brief or its contents. While we are not going to comment on this ongoing litigation, the American people know well that President Biden and his team have utterly different standards from their predecessors for what qualify as acceptable statements," said White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates.
Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, criticized the Justice Department's effort to intervene in the suit.
"The DOJ's position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong since it would give federal officials free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by publicly brutalizing any woman who has the courage to come forward," she wrote on Twitter. "Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a 'liar,' a 'slut,' or 'not my type' -- as Donald Trump did here -- is NOT the official act of an American president."
