Department of Justice lawyers argued on Monday that President Trump should not be personally sued for denying a rape accusation because he refuted the allegation while acting in his official capacity as president, The New York Times reports.
In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a department store in the 1990s. He publicly rejected this claim and accused her of lying to sell her new book; in return, Carroll filed a defamation suit against him. Last month, Attorney General William Barr intervened in the lawsuit, a highly unusual move, seeing as how the alleged incident took place years before Trump became president.
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