DOJ Move to Defend Trump in Carroll Suit Draws Veteran Judge
DOJ Move to Defend Trump in Carroll Suit Draws Veteran Judge
(Bloomberg) -- Whether the U.S. Justice Department can take over the defense of President Donald Trump in a defamation suit tied to a rape claim will be decided by a senior federal judge who’s previously overseen major terrorism and white-collar crime cases.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan was on Wednesday assigned the case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who sued Trump in New York state court last November after he said she lied when she claimed he raped her in the 1990s. The Justice Department, in an unusual move Tuesday, transferred the case to federal court and argued Trump was acting “within the scope” of his official duties when he said Carroll was lying.
Kaplan, 75, was appointed to the federal court in Manhattan in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and in 2011 he became the court’s chief judge. In 2015, Kaplan oversaw the trial of Osama bin Laden lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz and sentenced him to life in prison over the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. A decade earlier, he gutted a massive tax-shelter prosecution against former executives of accounting firm KPMG.
The U.S. move followed Trump’s failed attempt to put the case on hold in state court and has spurred an uproar among critics of the president and Attorney General William Barr who say taxpayers should not be picking up the bill to defend an action that clearly falls outside Trump’s official duties. Trump has been represented in the case by longtime outside lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP in New York, on Tuesday called the move a “shocking” abuse of power. She is not related to the judge.
Though many legal experts are skeptical the Justice Department will succeed in convincing courts the president was acting in an official capacity, the move will likely delay a suit in which Carroll has been demanding potentially damaging evidence from Trump in the final weeks before the presidential election. She is seeking both a deposition and a DNA sample to compare to a dress she claims she was wearing at the time of the alleged attack.
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