DOJ Asks SCOTUS To Free Trump Of E. Jean Carroll Verdict

President Donald Trump is still trying to appeal his way out of being the first president in history to be an adjudicated rapist, on top of being a 34-time felon. And, once again, he’s running to his conservative pals on the U.S. Supreme Court in a desperate attempt to make it all go away. Of course, last year, he asked SCOTUS to review the case in which he was found liable for the sexual assault of magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, which he did after failing multiple times to get the $83 million judgment against him overturned. This time, he wants more than a review. His thoroughly MAGA-fied Justice Department is requesting that the court change the rules so that it’s unlawful to sue him in the first place, which is totally what an innocent man would do.

From Politico:

In a Tuesday filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brett Shumate said the government would seek to use the Westfall Act to swap Trump for the U.S. as the defendant in the lawsuit. That would require dismissal of the case because the federal government can’t be sued for defamation. A panel of appeals court judges previously denied the U.S.’s effort to insert itself as the defendant.

The act gives federal employees immunity from some civil damages when they are found to have been acting within the scope of their employment. While Trump was president when he made the comments at issue in Carroll’s lawsuit, it would be highly unusual for the government to intervene on the president’s behalf at this stage, post trial and verdict.

The Justice Department’s filing comes as Trump is seeking to avoid paying the judgment while the Supreme Court decides whether to review the case — an effort in which he is virtually certain to succeed because Carroll doesn’t oppose the pause in payment as long as he increases the bond to account for interest. Last week, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to reconsider a panel’s ruling upholding the defamation verdict.

Just a quick point of note: Trump, this time, isn’t even trying to avoid the judgment against him for the rape itself, a judgment in which Carroll was only awarded $5 million. Instead, the DOJ is requesting that the $83.3 million judgment for defamation — which stemmed from a remark the president made in 2019, when he denied the assault, claiming she made it up to boost sales of a book, and saying she isn’t even his type — because that’s the only charge that the Westfall Act could be used to help him wiggle his way free of paying out the money.

Also, can we just note that Trump being made to pay a $5 million judgment for rape, but an $83 million judgment for lying about the rape may be indicative of a civil justice system that is just as broken as our criminal justice system?

It’s also worth noting that the DOJ’s request to implement the Westfall Act represents Trump’s fifth attempt to have either the judgment reviewed or tossed out entirely. It’s almost as if the president and his DOJ sycophants are too lacking in self-awareness to understand that all these appeals, review requests and other attempts at ducking accountability only serve to remind the public about the rape he was found guilty of.

Let’s say the DOJ is successful in getting SCOTUS to adopt the Westfall Act angle, making the country Carroll’s defendant, not the president, which would retroactively render Carroll’s suit null and void. Getting the president off the hook via a legal technicality would not make Trump not a rapist. He’d just be a rapist who was in a position of power to get the Justice Department to do some shrewd legal maneuvering on his behalf. It wouldn’t make him look less guilty. He wouldn’t be able to cite the decision as proof he was innocent all along — not that he wouldn’t try to repeatedly — especially since, again, it’s not the rape judgment he’s trying to dodge this time; it’s the defamation judgment.

Look, there’s a reason that all CBS host Norah O’Donnell needed to do was read an excerpt of an alleged attacker’s manifesto, apparently calling Trump a rapist and pedophile, to get Trump to completely freak out during his 60 Minutes interview.

The line in the manifesto didn’t even reference Trump by name, but a guilty conscience is like a ticking time bomb under pressure, and as I wrote in that report, our president “has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, is reportedly named in the Epstein files more than a million times, including an allegation by a woman who claims he assaulted her when she was 13,” and “he has openly bragged about grabbing women by their genitals without consent, has boasted about walking into the dressing rooms of teenage girls, has made multiple lewd comments about his own daughters, and, at the age of 46, told a pre-teen that he would be dating her in 10 years.”

So, Trump is a ticking time bomb who simply has too much to blow up about, which he does constantly throughout every single day, either via social media or in front of the camera.

And all the appeals in the world won’t save him from himself.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

E. Jean Carroll’s $83M Judgment Against President Trump Upheld

Trump Asks Supreme Court To Review Sexual Assault Verdict, Questions Why E. Jean Carroll Waited So Long To Accuse Him

DOJ Appeals To SCOTUS In Attempt Free Trump Of E. Jean Carroll Verdict was originally published on newsone.com