Garland has defended the DOJ’s defense in the case of defamation to replace Trump Donald Trump News

E writer Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexual assault and denounced the allegations when he underestimated his claim.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland defended the decision by the Justice Department to continue to represent Donald Trump defamation lawsuit The woman was accused of sexually assaulting a former U.S. president in the 1990s.

“The Department of Justice’s job in making decisions in law is not to back down any previous or current administration,” Garland said in an appearance before the U.S. Senate table on Wednesday.

“The essence of the rule of law … is that they should be treated like cases, that there is one rule for democracy and another for Republicans, that there is no rule for friends and another for enemies,” Garland said.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents U.S. government officials in litigation related to their official duties, said this week continuing with his defense of the former president, who began under the previous administration.

“It’s not always easy to apply that rule. Sometimes it means we have to make a decision about the law that we would never make and we don’t really agree with the policy issues, ”said Garland, who has been sharply criticized for the decision.

Critics have argued that government attorneys should not be involved in Trump’s defense because the case is related to Trump’s alleged personal behavior prior to his inauguration.

In a letter to Garland, a group of 21 members of the U.S. House of Representatives spoke out against the decision. The department “should not have spent taxpayer dollars to defend former President Trump against a defamation case … The decision is completely wrong,” said one of the signatories, congressman Jerry Nadler.

“There was a situation when he used his office to further and advance the interests of the United States,” Barb McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told MSNBC.

“He’s acting out of his own self-interest about something that happened 20 years ago in his private life,” McQuad said.

He had the writer Jean Carroll complained Trump In a 2019 magazine article, he sexually assaulted her at a major New York store.

Roboll Kaplan Carroll’s lawyer said on June 8 that he was disturbed by the Biden administration’s decision to support Trump in the case. “It’s horrible that Donald Trump raped E Jean Carroll in New York department stores many years ago,” Kaplan told Politico.

.@JustiziaDept he would not have spent taxpayer dollars to defend himself against the defamation case filed by former President Trump E. Jean Carroll. The decision to do so is completely wrong. pic.twitter.com/CkgrdvktGg

– Representative Nadler (@RepJerryNadler) June 9, 2021

“It’s really touching that the current Department of Justice is letting Donald Trump lie, thus depriving our client of court day,” he said.

Asked about the accusation that he was president, Trump denied knowing Carroll and said his claim was a lie.

In a statement filed in a federal appeals court on June 7, Justice Department attorneys took the same legal stance that the department claimed when Trump was president.

The Justice Department argued that it did not support Trump Carroll’s behavior, even though the law governing lawsuits against federal officials confirmed that he had decided to take over the defense of the former prime minister.

“When members of the White House media asked President Trump to respond to Ms. Carroll’s serious allegations of wrongdoing at the time, they asked her questions as president,” departmental lawyers wrote in a new court statement.

“Selected officials can, and often do, make allegations about personal illnesses that raise questions about their suitability for the position.”