A woman who has accused President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s said she was stunned and speechless after the Justice Department on Wednesday turned down an opportunity to make oral arguments on whether Trump can substitute the United States for himself as the defendant in her defamation lawsuit.
E. Jean Carroll watched from a seat in the top row of a jury box as U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan gave a government lawyer a chance to argue by phone, after the lawyer who was supposed to argue in person was banned from the courthouse because he traveled from Virginia. New York requires visitors from Virginia to quarantine for 14 days.
William Lane, a Department of Justice civil division attorney, told the judge the government would rest on its papers, meaning it would rely solely on already submitted written arguments.
“I’m stunned, stunned, and actually speechless, which is unusual,” Carroll told reporters outside the courthouse.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for Carroll, said it was a “shocking scenario for the government to just, essentially surrender, and not even try to argue the case.”
Carroll’s lawyers offered to answer any questions the judge might have, but he did not ask any.
“Frankly, I’m astonished at what happened today. In decades of litigating in courtrooms throughout the country, I’ve never seen the Department of Justice decline to make an oral argument when all that it meant here would be having to argue by phone,” she told reporters.