U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan refused to let the government substitute itself for Trump as a defendant in former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit. The Justice Department declined to comment. He has denied the claims of several women who accused him of sexual misconduct occurring before he took office. Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said they looked forward to pursuing the defamation case in federal court. “A comment about government action, public policy, or even an election is categorically different than a comment about an alleged sexual assault that took place roughly twenty years before the president took office,” he wrote.

Source: Standard Digital October 28, 2020 06:26 UTC