E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys push back on Trump’s petition for presidential immunity

The limits of presidential immunity are about to be tested as President Donald Trump insists it extends to the $83M defamation verdict.

E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys are pushing back on the claim that he doesn’t have to pay back the tens of millions of dollars awarded to Carroll after Trump was found guilty of defaming her. The president is petitioning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which previously ruled that Trump waived any potential immunity defense simply because he waited too long to use it. However, he is now arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling means that immunity defenses cannot be waived. Ultimately, they believe this means that the judgment would need to be reversed.

Carroll’s legal team denies that immunity would cover the case.

“There is no good reason to stretch the law of immunity beyond its breaking point—and erase the law of defamation as it applies to a president—simply because Trump acted the way he did as part of his personal vendetta against Carroll,” they wrote, according to a brief filed on Monday.

“At bottom, Trump is arguing that holding him accountable here would chill a president’s speech in the future, and that like the Wizard of Oz, he must be given free rein to say whatever he wants whenever he wants without repercussion—no matter how knowingly false, and no matter how defamatory or damaging,” said attorney Robert Kaplan.

They object to Trump’s “repeated, and intentional, use of the judicial process” as “completely at odds with any claim of presidential immunity.”

“Here, Trump used that bully pulpit to smear and defame Carroll about an extremely personal issue—the fact that when he was a private citizen, he had sexually assaulted her—and the only governmental ‘function’ he has identified is that of speaking to the public,” the brief accuses.

“If this is not an example of the President speaking to the public in an unofficial capacity, then everything a President says is official and immune—a result that the Supreme Court has never countenanced.”

Sierra Marlee

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