Trump Might Escape Writer’s Defamation Suit Because He Was President

please read the E. Jean Carroll article in canvas and discuss the following Is E. Jean Carroll an all-purpose public figure or a limited-purpose public figure? Why? Reading: E. Jean Carroll’s case may fail thanks to broad protections granted to federal officials and employees. She still plans to file a separate suit accusing the ex-president of rape. A District of Columbia court will have to determine whether Donald J. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he scoffed at the accusations of a woman who said he raped her decades ago, a federal appeals court in New York ruled on Tuesday. The future of the case, involving the writer E. Jean Carroll, depends on the decision. If the court in Washington rules that Mr. Trump was acting in his role as a federal employee — and the United States becomes the defendant, instead of Mr. Trump — Ms. Carroll’s suit cannot proceed, because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation. The 2-to-1 ruling by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York stems from a lawsuit in which Ms. Carroll said Mr. Trump damaged her reputation when he denied attacking her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and branded her a liar. The court had to answer two questions: first, whether the president is an employee of the federal government, and second, whether he was acting in that capacity when he made his comments about Ms. Carroll. The court held that the president does count as a federal employee but left the other question to the Washington court. The ruling was in part a rejection of Ms. Carroll’s legal argument, and Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, claimed it as a victory. “This decision will protect the ability of all future presidents to effectively govern without hindrance,” Ms. Habba said in a statement. “We are confident that the D.C. Court of Appeals will find that our client was acting within the scope of his employment when properly repudiating Ms. Carroll’s allegations.” Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said she was confident the court in Washington would agree with the core of her client’s position: that Mr. Trump was not acting in his official capacity when he made the comments. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the ruling. Ms. Kaplan said her client still plans to file a separate suit in November, taking advantage of a new state law giving adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil lawsuits, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. The federal appeals panel’s majority opinion was written by Judge Guido Calabresi, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. It does not express a view on whether Mr. Trump’s statements were defamatory, but does say that finding that Mr. Trump was speaking as a federal employee would mean “the failure of Carroll’s defamation lawsuit.” The ruling reverses the ruling of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of U.S. District Court in Manhattan who had held that the president is not considered a federal employee for the purposes of civil lawsuits, and that in any case Mr. Trump had been acting outside his official role when he made the statements. In November 2019, Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump for defamation in state court in Manhattan, claiming he had lied in publicly denying he had raped her, an accusation she had made months earlier in a book excerpt in New York magazine. In the excerpt, Ms. Carroll had said Mr. Trump threw her against the wall of a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump then pulled down her tights, opened his pants and forced himself on her, she claimed. After Ms. Carroll’s allegation was published, Mr. Trump said she was “totally lying,” denied that the assault had occurred and said he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.” In August 2020, a state judge issued a ruling in the case that could have opened the door to Mr. Trump’s having to sit for a sworn deposition before the presidential election. A month later, the Trump administration’s Justice Department entered the case. In a highly unusual move, the department transferred the case into federal court in Manhattan and substituted the federal government for Mr. Trump as the defendant. Ms. Carroll’s lawyers argued vigorously in court filings that Mr. Trump was not acting as a government employee when he made the remarks.