The news that Justice Department lawyers are taking over the defense of Donald Trump against a lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in the 1980s, is even worse than it sounds.
On the face of it, it’s outrageous that government lawyers should expend taxpayer dollars to defend Trump against charges that he defamed Carroll by saying he had never met her and that she is a liar.
But underneath, in the legal nitty-gritty, the harm is greater still. The Justice Department isn’t just defending Trump. It’s poised to argue that Carroll’s suit should be treated under a federal law that protects government employees from being personally sued for acts taken within the scope of their official duties.
This is a gross misconstruction of federal law. Trump’s denial that he ever met Carroll had literally nothing to do with his job as president.
To understand why what’s going on here is so bad, you have to start with Carroll’s lawsuit. It doesn’t seek damages arising from the rape that she alleges, which she says happened long before Trump was president. There would be no conceivable way for the government to allege that Trump was acting in an official capacity then.