The US president, Donald Trump, has applied to overturn the jury’s award of 83.3 million dollars in damages in the defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll. He has challenged the verdict at the country’s highest court, the Supreme Court. Alongside Trump, the US Justice Department has separately filed a similar application.
The main argument of Trump’s lawyers is that his remarks about Carroll while he was serving as president were part of his official duties. He is therefore entitled, they say, to the benefit of presidential legal immunity in this case.
In the application, the Justice Department’s federal lawyers said that if the top court does not intervene, a sitting president would have to bear personal financial liability of nearly 100 million dollars for remarks made in the course of official duties.
The application refers to the Westfall Act. Under this law, federal officials receive legal protection in certain civil cases for specific acts carried out in the course of official duties.
Trump’s personal lawyers invoked the Supreme Court’s landmark 2024 ruling in “Trump v United States.” That ruling widened the scope of a president’s criminal immunity. Although it applies by its core definition to criminal cases, Trump’s lawyers are seeking to apply the same argument to civil cases. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, however, rejected this argument last year.
A long legal battle and a history of penalties
The former Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll has long been fighting two defamation cases against Trump. In her 2019 book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” she alleged that Trump sexually assaulted and raped her in the dressing room of a New York department store in 1996.
Denying the allegation in this case, Trump said: “Carroll fabricated this false accusation of sexual assault entirely to serve her own personal interests. This woman is not my type.”
In June this year the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s appeal against a 5 million dollar penalty. With interest added, the amount reached about 5.8 million dollars, which a federal court ordered to be paid.
It is not yet certain whether the Supreme Court will accept for hearing this new joint appeal by Trump and the US Justice Department against the 83.3 million dollar award.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report