DOJ appeals ruling preventing it from replacing Trump in E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit

The Department of Justice filed an appeal Wednesday in columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against President Trump, after a court ruled against the department’s efforts to replace the president as the defendant in the lawsuit, according to multiple reports.

Carroll sued Trump last year in his personal capacity for defamation after he publicly denied her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.

Last month, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that the president is not an employee of the government and that the allegations are not connected to his actions in his official capacity.

Kaplan rejected the Justice Department’s efforts to substitute for the president as the defendant in the case. 

But the department on Wednesday appealed the decision to the 2^nd Circuit Court, CNN reported. It has previously argued that Trump made the allegedly defamatory comments while acting in his capacity as president.

Federal law does not allow for defamation cases against government officials. 

Carroll in June 2019 published her allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the 1990s Trump, who was a private businessman at the time, has denied the allegations.