Biden's Justice Department Is Now ... Defending Trump
By Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone
08 June 21
E. Jean Carroll's case isn't the only instance of Merrick Garland and the
DOJ looking out for the former president
While campaigning last year, then-candidate Joe Biden didn't seem very
enthusiastic about his prospective Justice Department prosecuting
prospective civilian Donald Trump. It's "a very, very unusual thing and
probably not very . good for democracy, to be talking about prosecuting
former presidents," the future president said in August.
But it would have been hard to imagine that Biden's Justice Department would
wind up defending Trump in court, which has become a strange theme of the
first few months of Attorney General Merrick Garland's tenure. The latest
example came Monday night, when the DOJ filed a brief with a federal appeals
court in New York claiming that Trump could not be sued for defamation by E.
Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her, because the defamatory
comments in question were made while Trump was president.
"Elected public officials can - and often must - address allegations
regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for
office," the brief read. "Officials do not step outside the bounds of their
office simply because they are addressing questions regarding allegations
about their personal lives," the lawyers for the Justice Department added.
Carroll's lawyer said the brief was "truly shocking," according to The New
York Times. Carroll herself criticized the move, as well. "As women across
the country are standing up and holding men accountable for assault, the
D.O.J. is trying to stop me from having that same right," she said in a
statement.
In 2019, Carroll wrote that Trump raped her in a department store dressing
room in the mid-1990s. Trump not only denied he raped Carroll, saying she
was not his "type," he denied ever having met her. Months later, Carroll
sued Trump for defamation in state court, which is where the case sat until
last September, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr transferred the case to
federal court after a state judge rejected Trump's attempt to halt the case.
Trump, who was then in the heat of his re-election campaign, now had the
Justice Department at his back, as well as the fact that federal law also
happens to prohibit government employees from being sued for defamation.
The Justice Department is apparently still at his back, and not just on the
Carroll case. Paul Butler pointed out a few examples recently in The
Washington Post.
Biden's DOJ is also fighting to conceal information Barr used to
mischaracterize the Mueller report before it was released to the public.
Barr argued the memo he used fell under attorney-client privilege, but a
federal judge disagreed, as did a group of Democratic senators who wrote a
letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to release an
unredacted version of the memo. This did not happen.
Then, late last month, the DOJ asked a judge to throw out a lawsuit against
Trump, Barr, and other officials for the violent manner in which protesters
were cleared away from Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., last June, so
that Trump could have a photo op at an adjacent church. At the time, Biden
criticized Barr for ordering the protesters cleared, bashing how the Justice
Department "deployed the U.S. military, tear gassing peaceful protesters" in
service of Trump's reelection.
Biden also criticized Barr for transferring Carroll's case from state to
federal court, accusing Trump of using the Justice Department as his "own
law firm."
"Can you remember any Republican president going out there, or former
Democratic president: 'Go find that guy and prosecute him'? You ever hear
that? 'By the way, I'm being sued because a woman's accused me of rape:
Represent me. Represent me,' Biden said during a town hall event last
October. "What's that all about?"
It's a good question.