The White House liaison with the Department of Justice (DoJ), Heidi Stirrup, sought derogatory information late last year from a senior justice department official about a woman who claims to have been raped by Donald Trump, according to the person from whom Stirrup directly sought the information.
The revelation raises the prospect that allies of the president of the United States were directly pressuring the justice department to try to dig up potentially damaging information about a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her.
And Jean Carroll, a journalist and advisory columnist, sued Trump in November 2019, claiming he defamed her when he denied the report that she had been raped by him. Carroll claims that Trump sexually abused her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a sophisticated Manhattan department store, in late 1995 or early 1996.
At the time, Trump responded to her accusations by claiming that Carroll was “totally lying” and tried to ridicule her by saying “she is not my type”. These and similar comments prompted Carroll to sue him.
Stirrup apparently believed that the justice department had information that could help the president’s legal defense in the process. The lawyer from whom Stirrup sought information about Carroll said that Stirrup approached them not long after a judge ruled that the justice department could not take on Trump’s defense.
Stirrup asked if the department had discovered any derogatory information about Carroll that he could share with her or the president’s private attorney. Stirrup also suggested that it could serve as a channel between the department and people close to the president or his private legal team.
Stirrup also asked the officer if the justice department had any information that Carroll or anyone on his legal team had links with the Democratic party or party activists, who could have falsely accused her of the president.
Previously, Trump himself, without citing any evidence, suggested that his political opponents were behind the allegations: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Carroll or New York Magazine [to whom Carroll first told her story], let us know as soon as possible, ”said Trump.
The employee from whom Stirrup sought information admonished Stirrup, telling her that her request was inappropriate.
The employee recalled “transmitting to her in the strongest possible terms” that it was wrong, in the first place, to seek such information and instructed her not to do so in the future.
When she learned that Stirrup later sought out nonpublic information from other justice department officials about other ongoing investigations, including electoral fraud and nonpublic information regarding matters of interest to the White House, Stirrup was informed that she was not well off. coming to the justice department and banned from the building.
On December 3, the Associated Press, citing three sources, reported on Stirrup’s ban “after trying to pressure officials to provide confidential information about electoral fraud and other matters she could pass on to the White House.” It was not previously reported, however, that one of the problems that led to Stirrup’s ban was that she sought information about the Carroll case.
It is not clear whether Stirrup was acting on his own or under the direction of the White House when it comes to the Carroll case.
But many consider it unlikely that Stirrup was doing his investigation entirely independently. Stirrup served as a liaison with the justice department during a period when the White House was removing its contacts to virtually every major federal agency that they believed could be disloyal – while informing their replacements that they would no longer report to the agencies to which they were referred. were assigned but directly to the White House.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, saying they were unsuccessful in finding out more.
The outcome of Carroll’s defamation case could have immense political and legal consequences for Trump.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, said that if the case goes to trial, Trump will have to “provide evidence and testify about the underlying rape allegation” and may be at risk of perjury.
Failure to testify sincerely during a civil case can have serious consequences for a president or other prominent political figure. When former President Bill Clinton was prosecuted for sexual harassment and later admitted to having misleading testimony in that case, he was charged by the House of Representatives, acquitted by the United States Senate after a trial and voluntarily surrendered his license to practice the law for five years.
Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, who considered the Justice Department’s attempt to take Trump’s legal counsel, noted in an October 26 ruling that any conclusion that Trump defamed Carroll would likely be considered an implicit conclusion by a jury that Trump actually raped Carroll.
“The question of whether Mr. Trump actually raped Ms. Carroll seems to be at the heart of his process. This is because the truth or falsity of a defendant’s alleged defamatory statements can be decisive for any case of defamation, ”said Kaplan.
In early September, the justice department, under the direction of then-attorney general William Barr, sought to replace Trump’s private attorney with lawyers from the department to defend him from the Carroll case. Justice officials argued that, while he accused Carroll of lying and continuing to attack her, Trump was acting in his official capacity as president of the United States.
Kaplan determined that the justice department could not take on Trump’s defense, concluding that Trump’s alleged defamation of Carroll had nothing to do with his official duties as president or “the government operation” or “within the scope of his employment ”.
The justice department promised to appeal Kaplan’s decision. But Joe Biden’s justice department is unlikely to move forward with such an appeal.
Justice officials and outside legal observers say the department’s position that the president was acting in his official capacity while he allegedly defamed his alleged rape victim – some 20 years earlier – is a position that would hardly prevail with most judges.
Last week, in announcing that he was appointing federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to be his new attorney general, the president-elect said he would end Trump’s practice of “treating the attorney general as his personal lawyer and the department as your personal firm ”.