Trump, DOJ ask Supreme Court to toss $83.3M defamation award to E. Jean Carroll

E. Jean Carroll walks outside Manhattan Federal Court, for the second civil trial after she accused former U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her decades ago, in New York City, U.S., January 25, 2024. Brendan Mcdermid | ReutersPresident Donald Trump and the Department of Justice on Tuesday separately asked the Supreme Court to overturn a civil court verdict that ordered him to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her while denying her claim that he sexually assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s."This is the first case in our Nation's history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office," the petition to the Supreme Court by Trump's lawyers says.His attorneys claim that Trump has immunity from the defamation claim because he made the comments about Carroll in 2019, when he was president. The DOJ's petition is based on another argument: that it should have been allowed to substitute the U.S. government for Trump as the defendant in the lawsuit because he was president at the time he made the statements about Carroll.If that switch had been allowed, the case would have been dismiss...