Trump tries defamation case dodge

Federal appeals judges have asked whether a US president’s every remark is part of the job, as they consider whether former president Donald Trump can be held liable in a defamation case that concerns his response to a rape allegation.

Trump and the US Justice Department say he was acting in his official capacity when he spoke to the media about writer E Jean Carroll’s accusation. They want to swap the US Government for Trump as the defendant in her defamation lawsuit.

Federal law makes it difficult to sue US government employees for jobrelated actions, and a law that sometimes allows such lawsuits specifically excludes libel and slander claims. This could keep Carroll’s case from going forward if the courts decide that Trump was acting as a government worker.

A federal judge rejected the request in October. Yesterday’s panel of 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals judges, sitting in New York, didn’t give a clear indication of how or when they would rule.

Carroll, a former longtime Elle magazine advice columnist, sued Trump in 2019, saying he slandered her in denying her allegation that he raped her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump said Carroll was ‘‘totally lying’’ and was ‘‘not my type’’, among other remarks. He also said they had never met, dismissing a 1987 photo of the two and their then-spouses at a social event.

Carroll’s lawyers say Trump’s response went beyond any job obligation.

‘‘A White House job is not a promise of an unlimited prerogative to brutalise someone who was a victim of a prior attack,’’ lawyer Joshua Matz told the court.