Carroll pushes back on Trump claim immunity extends to $83M defamation verdict

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll's attorneys pejoratively likened President Trump to the Wizard of Oz in new court documents filed Monday as they pushed back on his claims that presidential immunity protects him from Carroll's $83.3 million civil defamation award.

Trump is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit the jury’s verdict from last year, which stemmed from Trump’s denials of Carroll’s story that he sexually abused her at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s.

The 2nd Circuit previously upheld the trial judge's ruling that Trump waived any immunity defense by waiting too long to raise it. But Trump has argued the Supreme Court’s subsequent presidential immunity decision made clear the defense cannot be waived, so the judge must reverse course and wipe the judgment.

“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,” Carroll’s attorneys pushed back in their brief at the 2nd Circuit filed Monday.

Carroll’s attorneys said the lower judge was right that Trump waived his immunity argument and that the defense wouldn’t apply, even if Trump could still raise it.

“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,” attorney Robbie Kaplan wrote in the brief.

Carroll sued Trump twice after coming forward with her sexual assault claims during his first White House term.

The $83.3 million award revolved around a written statement Trump gave to reporters and comments he made on the South Lawn in June 2019 denying Carroll’s story once she went public.

The trial judge ruled the statements were automatically defamatory given Carroll’s other lawsuit, which culminated in a jury ordering Trump to pay another $5 million by finding him liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in another statement.

Trump’s appeal to overturn that verdict has so far failed. A three-judge 2nd Circuit panel upheld the $5 million award late last month, but Trump has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the decision.

Carroll’s new brief chastises Trump for not raising his immunity claims until the eve of the second trial. Highlighting Trump’s efforts to delay the case and file counter-claims against Carroll, her attorneys suggested his “repeated, and intentional, use of the judicial process” is “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 reads.

“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.”

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