Judge: US can’t replace Trump in columnist’s slander suit
A federal judge on Tuesday denied President Donald Trump’s request that he be replaced as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped a woman in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came after the Justice Department argued that the United States — and by extension U.S. taxpayers — should replace Trump as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E. Jean Carroll.
The government’s lawyers contended that the United States could step in as the defendant because Trump was forced to respond to her lawsuit to prove he was physically and mentally fit for the job.