In a trial that was triggered by a rape allegation against Donald Trump, the US Department of Justice intervened on the side of the President in a surprising legal maneuver to prevent a DNA test. The author E. Jean Carroll wants to prove the rape allegation.
Carroll had written in a book excerpt published in the summer of 2019 that Trump had raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Trump denied the allegation: he said in an interview in the Oval Office at the White House, firstly, Carroll was not his type, and secondly, that never happened.
Libel suit against Trump
Carroll then brought a libel suit against Trump in November 2019. Among other things, she asked for a DNA sample from Trump to match it with the traces of a dress that she wore that day.
The US Department of Justice now argued in a motion filed yesterday (local time) before a court in New York that Trump made his comments on Carroll’s allegations as part of his work as US President.
Therefore, under a law on the accountability of government employees, the United States would have to step in as the defendant for Trump as a private person. Carroll’s attorney criticized the motion as an „unprecedented attempt to use the power of the US government to evade responsibility for private misconduct“.
