Judge warns DOJ gift to Trump could keep giving

A judge has warned that former President Donald Trump is building a legal shield that could prevent him from being held accountable for inciting the January 6, 2021 rebellion, citing a strange move by the Justice Department on Trump’s side in a rape. A defamation case last year.

The Department of Justice’s legal position — that anything the president does is part of his official duties, and thus makes a federal employee immune from lawsuits — was widely criticized at the time. But the matter re-emerged on Tuesday, when a federal appeals judge found it necessary to issue a stark warning that clearly signaled Trump’s accountability.

“By this reasoning, as long as the president appears to be engaging in the kind of behavior he is expected to perform—such as speaking to a reporter or attending a government meeting—he is acting within the scope of his job. But if that is the case, the mere presence of others neutralizes all what the president does or says, because no president can be held responsible for damage done in front of a microphone or in an official meeting—whether it be denigrating a citizen or exposing a citizen’s secret security information, or inciting riots,” Wrote Judge Denny Chin in New York City.

“This is not and should not be law,” he added.

The closing lines outline the heavy blows to the former president, who is under a criminal investigation for mishandling of top-secret government documents and separately faces civil lawsuits for telling his loyal MAGA followers — who he knew were armed with guns — to march on the Capitol.

I think it is a legitimate concern. What the judge found was the very real possibility of unforeseen consequences, said Jared Carter, a professor at Vermont Law School.

Chen was the only voice of dissent on a three-judge panel of the Second Court of Appeals in New York City, which reviewed a legal dispute between Trump and the vice president. deer Magazine advice columnist E.Jan Carroll. The two other appeals judges gave Trump an interim victory by overturning a district court ruling and taking a major step toward expanding Trump’s legal immunity normally reserved for low-ranking federal employees.

The question is whether Trump bears any personal responsibility for what he did to defend himself after Carroll accused him of raping her. In June 2019, New York magazine published Excerpt from Carol’s bookwhere she accused Trump of raping her inside the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store sometime around 1995. Trump He denied ever meeting Carol And the Later said Hill: “Number one, it’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.” Carol lawsuit on charges of defamation.

The 2019 case moved at a slow pace, first because Trump was still in office, and then later because Trump used his coup attorney at the Justice Department to defend him in court — taxpayers footed the bill.

E Jane Carroll speaks on stage during the How to Write Your Own Life panel at the 2019 Glamor Women of the Year Summit at Alice Tully Hall on November 10, 2019, in New York City.

Ilya S. Savinuk/Getty Images For Joy

The public largely expected that to change when Trump lost the election and the Biden administration changed the leadership of the Department of Justice. But the Justice Department made the shocking decision last year to continue to defend Trump, arguing that he could continue to rely on the executive authority he once had.

These arguments convinced the two-judge majority of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, who wrote that Trump could get protections afforded to federal workers under the 1988 Westphal Act because he was like your average Joe.

He wrote: “As Trump indicates in his brief, the President is a civil servant in the basic sense of the term: he renders a favor to his employer, the United States government, in return for a salary and other employment-related benefits,” wrote Justices Guido Calabresi and William J. Nardini.

Trump’s attorney, Alina Heba, issued a statement afterward, saying, “This decision will protect the ability of all future presidents to govern effectively without hindrance.”

But the appeal decision has now put a second question to the District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking them to determine whether his statements about Carroll were “within the scope of his work as President of the United States.”

The Department of Justice has already recorded its position that Trump’s actions were good in his job — despite the fact that he was referring to a personal matter involving possible sexual assault that occurred decades before he ran for president. It gives Trump another defense strategy to use against various civil lawsuits that seek to pay him to send rioters to attack the Capitol, where they have injured police officers and destroyed parts of the historic building.

This is a win for Trump, without a doubt. Will he use it in civil and criminal matters? “One hundred percent,” said John Pavia, who teaches a law school class at Quinnipiac University that focuses on questionable behavior by senior government officials.

It’s apples and oranges…everything he was doing in Carroll was very different from what he was doing on January 6 in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol.

Phil Andonian, attorney on Representative Eric Swalwell’s legal team

However, Pavia suspects the defense will actually work against the January 6 cases. He said the three civil cases against Trump for inciting riots are different enough from Carroll’s case that the second circuit ruling should not hold.

“I don’t think it will have the force of a historic decision that will somehow affect or have an impact on everything else that happens,” he told The Daily Beast.

But if the D.C. Court of Appeals goes Trump’s way as well, his lawyers will likely use the case to raise the defense that another speaker at the rally that sparked a mob outrage that day, Rep. Moe Brooks (R-AL) was based. Legal scholars said Brooks has gotten himself out of trouble in the three lawsuits that seek to punish the people who pushed the disobedience to the brink, and Trump is likely to try the same with this new ruling.

In March, U.S. District Court Judge Amit B. Phil Andonian, a lawyer on Swalwell’s legal team, acknowledged Chen’s concerns but said it was too early to say the Justice Department’s decision to defend the inviolability of the Trump presidency “puts the Jan. 6 lawsuits at risk.”

“It’s apples and oranges…everything he was doing in Carroll was very different from what he was doing on January 6 in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol,” Andonian told The Daily Beast. What we claim in our case is fundamentally different from [Trump] Saying something in response to a formal interview. Our central point is that what Trump did was to unleash a mob in Congress… and to attack an equal branch of government was certainly not within the realm of presidential authority.”

Carter, professor at VermontAnd the He cautioned that the appeal decision that the Trump team is celebrating may not be the gift it seems. He noted that the decision that formally found Trump was an employee was also full of indications that his actions were in fact not qualified as part of his job. For example, Judge Calabresi agree This case was described as a “rare” of “employee misconduct”.

“They provide a roadmap that the DC circuit can use to determine that this is outside… its scope,” Carter told The Daily Beast.

However, this legal battle does not necessarily eliminate the case of Carroll v. Trump. Last week, her attorney revealed in court letters that they are preparing to launch a new lawsuit under New York’s new sexual assault survivors law — a case targeting Trump in the same way that victims pursue Catholic priests accused of child molestation.

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