Oct. 11, 2022 - Epoch Times
11:23
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Good evening and happy Columbus Day. | |
| Now, if you happen to have followed the news over the past month or so, then you're likely well aware that President Trump has been facing several legal challenges coming in from multiple directions. | |
| However, for some very odd reason, the exact same news sources that spend countless minutes of airtime dissecting all these different legal challenges, well, they somehow fail to mention that a federal court of appeals has just tossed out a vicious lawsuit against President Trump that had been in litigation for well over two years now. | |
| Specifically, this was the lawsuit that was brought forth by an advice columnist named Elizabeth Jean Carroll, claiming that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her sometime back in the 1990s. | |
| You see, what happened was that about three years ago, back in June of 2019, and just prior to the release of her new book, which detailed this alleged event, Ms. | |
| Carroll wrote a piece in the New York Magazine laying out the claim that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her either in the fall of 1995 or sometime in the spring of 1996. | |
| The assault allegedly took place at a high-end clothing store here in Manhattan. | |
| Then, right after that article was published, Ms. | |
| Carroll began a series of interviews on different news programs, including this one here on CNN with Mr. | |
| Anderson Cooper. | |
| You don't feel like a victim. | |
| I was not thrown on the ground and ravished. | |
| The word rape carries so many sexual connotations. | |
| This was not sexual. | |
| It hurt. | |
| I think most people think of rape as a violent assault. | |
| I think most people think of rape as being sexy. | |
| Let's take a short break. | |
| Think of the fantasies. | |
| We've got to take a quick break. | |
| If you can stick around, we'll talk more on the other side. | |
| You're fascinating to talk to. | |
| And back then, amidst this flurry of interviews, Ms. | |
| Carroll was asked about whether or not she was planning to sue President Trump over this alleged assault. | |
| And she said she wouldn't, because it would be disrespectful to women at the southern border. | |
| Here's specifically what she said in a response to a reporter over at MSNBC when this question was asked. | |
| And please note, I had to change one word in her response, because if I use that one word, well, the YouTube algorithm will pointlessly age-restrict this episode. | |
| Sure, you'll figure out which word it was. | |
| Quote, I would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border who are being sexually assaulted around the clock down there without any protection. | |
| They are young women. | |
| It would just be disrespectful, and mine was three minutes. | |
| I'm a mature woman. | |
| I could handle it and keep going. | |
| My life has gone on. | |
| I'm a happy woman. | |
| But for the women down there and for the women actually around the world, you know in every culture, this is going on no matter how high in society or low in society. | |
| It just seems disrespectful that I would bring It just doesn't make sense to me. | |
| However, what remained unmentioned in her response is that the New York Statute of Limitations had actually already passed on this alleged assault, and so technically she would not have been able to file charges for something that happened 23 years in the past. | |
| But the story did not end there, because this media blitz then prompted the press to ask President Trump for a statement on the whole matter, which he delivered. | |
| To start with, this was a statement that was put out by President Trump amidst this entire flurry of interviews, as well as that article over in New York Magazine. | |
| Quote, Regarding the story by E. Jean Carroll, claiming she once encountered me at Bergdorf Goodman 23 years ago, I've never met this person in my life. | |
| She's trying to sell a new book. | |
| That should indicate her motivation. | |
| It should be sold in the fiction section. | |
| Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda. | |
| It's just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. | |
| Then, going one step further, in June of 2019, while speaking with a publication called The Hill, President Trump once again denied the allegations. | |
| He accused Ms. | |
| Carroll of using her allegedly false claims as a way to promote her new book, and he added this, And after that response, Ms. | |
| Carroll filed a lawsuit. | |
| Because you see, while the alleged assault had taken place so long ago that the statute of limitations had passed, Stopping Ms. | |
| Carroll from being able to sue over sexual battery, well, President Trump's new statement allowed her the opportunity to try and sue for defamation, which she did. | |
| Ms. | |
| Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against President Trump, claiming that his comments harmed both her character as well as her career. | |
| And at the time, she was seeking both a retraction of his statements as well as monetary damages. | |
| However, President Trump's legal team took a different approach than one might expect in their defense. | |
| Because instead of arguing the validity of his statements, they instead invoked the Westfall Act, Which is a piece of legislation that shields government employees from liability in work-related incidents. | |
| What this particular law means is that when a person is both a government employee and he or she is acting within the scope of their duties, then generally they are entitled to immunity for most types of lawsuits. | |
| Meaning, in practice, that while the U.S. government can be sued over some types of wrongdoings by its employees, those employees are generally immune from defamation lawsuits. | |
| Now, there's a bit more nuance to it, but that's generally the framework. | |
| And so, invoking the Westfall Act, the argument of Trump's legal team was that Ms. | |
| Carroll could not sue Donald Trump for something he said while acting in the capacity of a president answering questions from the press. | |
| Now, initially, the lower court did not buy that argument. | |
| They actually ruled against President Trump, and they allowed Ms. | |
| Carroll to proceed with her lawsuit anyway. | |
| However, after about three years of legal back and forth, a federal court of appeals has just reversed that decision and handed President Trump a victory on technical grounds. | |
| Specifically, in a two-to-one decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the initial decision that was made by the lower court, which allowed Ms. | |
| Carroll to sue President Trump, was actually made in error. | |
| Here's part of what this decision said that was written by one of the judges who was in favor of President Trump. | |
| Here's what his opinion stated. | |
| When an employee of the federal government is sued for tortious conduct that happens on the job, the employee is generally entitled to absolute immunity from personal liability under the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988, otherwise known as the Westfall Act. | |
| In this case, the lower court held that the president is not an employee of the government, as that term is used in the Westfall Act. | |
| In the alternative, it held that even if the president were a Westfall Act-covered employee, Trump had not acted within the scope of his employment when he allegedly defamed Carroll. | |
| For these reasons, the lower court denied Trump's earlier motion to dismiss the case. | |
| The government and Trump appealed. | |
| We reversed the lower court's holding that the president of the United States is not an employee of the government under the Westfall Act. | |
| The president is a government employee in the most basic sense of the term. | |
| He renders service to his employer, the United States government, in exchange for a salary and other job-related benefits. | |
| Meaning that the argument that President Trump was somehow not a covered employee of the government just did not hold water. | |
| However, there was a second part to this decision. | |
| Because besides being an employee of the government, in order to qualify for immunity, President Trump must also have been acting in his official government duties at the time that those statements were made. | |
| Because if he wasn't acting in his official government capacity, he wouldn't be immune from lawsuits. | |
| And in that question, well, here's what the federal court's decision said. | |
| We vacate the lower court's judgment that Trump did not act within the scope of his employment and certify that question to the D.C. Court of Appeals. | |
| Meaning, in plain English, that they overruled the lower court's decision, which said that Trump was not immune from liability, and they are now letting the Second Circuit Court of Appeals make that determination. | |
| The next step is that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals now has to determine whether President Trump was acting in his official government capacity when he was speaking to media outlets as the president, responding to their questions about sexual assault allegations that were made against him. | |
| Which, at least on its face, sounds a bit like it would be part of his official duties, but we'll just have to wait and see what the court comes back with. | |
| Regardless, though, after this opinion was published, President Trump's lawyer came out and they welcomed the court's decision, saying that it will, quote, However, ironically, this whole three-year-long legal battle over technicalities might all become pointless in the very near future. | |
| That's because... | |
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| And let's head on back to the studio. | |
| Ironically, this whole three-year-long legal battle over technicalities might all become pointless in the very near future. | |
| That's because in May of this year, in May of 2022, the governor of New York, Ms. | |
| Kathy Hochul, she signed into law something known as the New York's Adult Survivors Act. | |
| And once this piece of legislation goes into effect on November the 24th, it will offer a one-year window, during which time adult survivors of sexual assault will be able to bring civil claims against their alleged attackers, even though the statute of limitations had technically passed. | |
| Meaning that even though previously Ms. | |
| Carroll was not able to sue President Trump for the alleged sexual assault, come November, she will be able to. | |
| And according to a statement from her lawyer, that's exactly what she plans to do. | |
| And when she inevitably does, well, we'll be covering it here on this program. | |
| Also, besides this whole defamation lawsuit with Ms. | |
| Carroll, at this very moment, President Trump is facing several other legal challenges as well, including the Mar-a-Lago search warrant lawsuit, the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into the Trump Organization's taxes, the New York State Attorney General's lawsuit regarding President Trump's finances, a lawsuit with his niece about an earlier family settlement, a lawsuit that President Trump himself launched against CNN for defamation, among about a dozen other cases as well. | |
| And so, if you're interested, I will throw this case with Ms. | |
| Carol, I'll throw all the legal documents down into the description box below, and I will throw something like a master list down into the description box below, detailing all the other lawsuits as well. | |
| Furthermore, I would love to know whether you would like to see something like a detailed breakdown, like the one we did today, of any of the other lawsuits. | |
| If so, in the comments section below, please tell me which lawsuits you'd like to see a breakdown for. | |
| I'll be reading those comments later this week. | |
| And of course, while you're making your way down there to the comments section, perhaps take a quick detour to smash that like button so this video can be shared out to ever more people. | |
| And also, consider subscribing to this YouTube channel as well. | |
| That way we can get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed every time we publish it. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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