(Bloomberg) -- The US Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to let it intervene in President Donald Trump’s appeal of the $83.3 million jury verdict against him in a defamation suit brought by former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
The government will ask the high court justices to substitute the US for Trump in the case because the president was acting as a government employee when he denied Carroll’s sexual-assault claims in 2019, Assistant US Attorney General Brett Shumate said in a filing late Tuesday in Manhattan. A federal appeals court last month declined Trump’s request to reconsider a ruling affirming the jury verdict.
Substituting the US for Trump — allowed under the Westfall Act of 1988 — would result in the suit being dismissed because the US can’t be sued for defamation. A panel of appeals court judges previously denied the government’s request to invoke the Westfall Act in the case.
Carroll alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and then defamed her by calling her a liar when she went public with the claim in 2019. Trump is separately appealing a $5 million jury verdict against him in a sexual-abuse lawsuit brought by Carroll. The Supreme Court may decide in the coming weeks whether to hear Trump’s appeal of the sexual-abuse verdict.
The president denies wrongdoing in both cases.
A representative for Carroll’s legal team did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
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