{"id":200213,"date":"2021-06-07T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/07\/this-is-why-nothing-ever-changes\/"},"modified":"2021-06-07T18:05:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T23:05:00","slug":"this-is-why-nothing-ever-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/07\/this-is-why-nothing-ever-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Why Nothing Ever Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most depressing things about Washington, DC is how the establishment zealously defends their prerogatives and immunity, even if they are completely unjustified.<\/p>\n

You can talk about Ford pardoning Nixon, GHW Bush pardoning his Iran Contra co-conspirators, and now the Biden Department of Justice insisting that the government should defend Donald Trump from a libel suit<\/a>, because they need to, “Protect the institution.”<\/p>\n

The case involves behavior prior to Trump’s time in office, and the statements in question were made in a personal capacity, but the institution must be preserved.<\/p>\n

It stinks to high heaven:<\/p>\n

The Justice Department is keeping up the previous administration\u2019s fight to defend former president Donald Trump against a private defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who accused him of rape \u2014 an effort that President Joe Biden had criticized on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

On Monday, lawyers for the Justice Department as well as Trump\u2019s personal legal team were due to file the next round of briefs \u2014 marking the first major deadline for the department under the new administration to weigh in. In the government\u2019s latest brief<\/a>, the Justice Department lawyers continued to press arguments that the lower court judge got it wrong when he concluded that Trump wasn\u2019t shielded from being sued and was acting within the scope of his official duties as president when he accused Carroll of lying.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen members of the White House media asked then-President Trump to respond to Ms. Carroll\u2019s serious allegations of wrongdoing, their questions were posed to him in his capacity as President,\u201d the Justice Department wrote in Monday\u2019s reply brief. \u201cElected public officials can \u2014 and often must \u2014 address allegations regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for office.\u201d
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bullsh%$. <\/p>\n

The Justice Department under Biden inherited numerous pending Trump-era legal fights<\/a>, but Carroll\u2019s case was one of the few that Biden had offered an opinion about when he was running for office. A turnover in the White House can create sticky situations for DOJ to navigate \u2014 the department historically defends the authority of the executive branch and senior administration officials in court, even as the politics of the party in power changes across presidents.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

DOJ\u2019s effort to intervene in the case last fall was widely criticized<\/a> as a misuse of government resources on behalf of Trump. During a nationally televised town hall event in October, Biden had highlighted the Carroll case as an example of Trump trying to use the Justice Department as his \u201cown law firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you remember any Republican president going out there, or former Democratic president, \u2019Go find that guy and prosecute him\u2019? You ever hear that? Or: ‘By the way, I’m being sued because a woman’s accused me of rape. Represent me. Represent me.’ … What’s that all about? What is that about?\u201d Biden said at the time.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Biden was right then, and he is wrong now. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Carroll sued Trump in state court in New York in November 2019. Trump had litigated the case for months using privately retained lawyers. In September, however, DOJ filed notice that it was moving the case to federal court and intended to take over Trump\u2019s legal defense on behalf of the US government.<\/p>\n

The department argued at the time that Trump was covered by a federal law that protects federal employees from being sued as individuals over actions they take as part of their work, known as the Westfall Act. When Trump, as president, denied Carroll\u2019s allegation and accused her of making it up to sell copies of her book, the Justice Department argued that this law applied.<\/p>\n

If DOJ succeeded, the US government would become the defendant instead of Trump as an individual. That would likely end the lawsuit, since the government is shielded by a legal principle known as \u201csovereign immunity\u201d against a range of civil claims, including libel.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now the Biden DoJ has decided to try to extend this decision.<\/p>\n


In an opinion in late October, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan found that Trump wasn\u2019t a government \u201cemployee\u201d under the Westfall Act, which refers to \u201cofficers or employees of any federal agency.\u201d Even if Trump was an \u201cemployee\u201d within the meaning of that law, the judge wrote, his comments about Carroll didn\u2019t fall within the scope of his official duties as president, so the law still wouldn\u2019t cover his situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA comment about government action, public policy, or even an election is categorically different than a comment about an alleged sexual assault that took place roughly twenty years before the president took office. And the public\u2019s reasons for being interested in these comments are different as well,\u201d Kaplan wrote in the opinion. \u201cThe president\u2019s views on the former topics are interesting because they alert the public about what the government is up to. President Trump\u2019s views on the plaintiff\u2019s sexual assault allegation may be interesting to some, but they reveal nothing about the operation of government.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan also issued a statement saying they were confident they’d win on appeal.<\/p>\n

“It is horrific that Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a New York City department store many years ago. But it is truly shocking that the current Department of Justice would allow Donald Trump to get away with lying about it, thereby depriving our client of her day in court. The DOJ\u2019s position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong since it would give federal officials free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by publicly brutalizing any woman who has the courage to come forward. Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a \u2018liar,\u2019 a \u2018slut,\u2019 or \u2018not my type,\u2019 as Donald Trump did here, is not the official act of an American president,” Kaplan said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Department of Justice is functioning as the personal lawyer for a government official, and not as a representative of the government, or the people here.<\/p>\n

This is a disgrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most depressing things about Washington, DC is how the establishment zealously defends their prerogatives and immunity, even if they are completely unjustified. You can talk about Ford pardoning Nixon, GHW Bush pardoning his Iran Contra co-conspirators, and now the Biden Department of Justice insisting that the government should defend Donald Trump from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1009,1051,972,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-government","category-hypocrisy","category-justice","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}