In the national interest

Now here’s something I didn’t know – that Trump tried to say it was the country who was slandering a woman he assaulted, not Trump the person bro. He tried to make all of us responsible for his lies and obstruction.

Lame-duck President Donald Trump has used “every stall tactic in the book” in a “desperate” attempt to avoid famed columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of defaming her by denying that he raped her, Carroll’s attorneys told a judge on Friday morning.

The remarks were made at a hearing that Trump lodged an eleventh-hour objection to avoid. At 7:57 p.m. on Thursday night, Trump’s counsel filed a letter to stay all proceedings while they appeal of a ruling preventing the Department of Justice from acting as his private law firm on the taxpayer dime.

Shortly before the presidential election, Judge Kaplan rejected an attempt to rebrand Carroll v. Trump as Carroll v. United States of America. That attempt to substitute Trump with the nation relied upon the premise that the president acted in a official capacity when he said of Carroll: “She’s not my type.”

The Justice Department argued that Trump made his comment in service of his duties as President of the United States, an argument Carroll’s attorneys characterized as wrong and obscene.

“There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in October. “That should not be a controversial proposition. Remarkably, however, the Justice Department seeks to prove it wrong.”

Kind of breathtaking.

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