Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr continues to serve as Donald Trump's legal bag man as he is having the Justice Department step in on the state defamation case filed against Trump by E. Jean Carroll.

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

In a highly unusual legal move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.

Though the law gives employees of the federal government immunity from most defamation lawsuits, legal experts said it has rarely, if ever, been used before to protect a president, especially for actions taken before he entered office.

“The question is,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, “is it really within the scope of the law for government lawyers to defend someone accused of lying about a rape when he wasn’t even president yet?”

The motion also effectively protects Mr. Trump from any embarrassing disclosures in the middle of his campaign for re-election. A state judge issued a ruling last month that potentially opened the door to Mr. Trump being deposed in the case before the election in November, and Ms. Carroll’s lawyers have also requested that he provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress that Ms. Carroll said she was wearing at the time of the encounter.

Ms. Carroll’s lawyer said in a statement issued Tuesday evening that the Justice Department’s move to intervene in the case was a “shocking” attempt to bring the resources of the United States government to bear on a private legal matter.

“Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent,” the lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said, “and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”

Ms. Carroll herself accused the president of siccing Attorney General William P. Barr against her. “TRUMP HURLS BILL BARR AT ME,” she wrote on Twitter.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the motion.

It's the "effort to shield Trump from disclosure during the campaign" that is the real driver of this idiotic notion that federal taxpayers should fund Trump's defense in a case like this, but the fact of the matter is Trump being in the Oval Office now gives him a lot of power.

Trump can keep things tangled up in the courts as long as he remains in the office.  Once he's out, however...

We all know that Trump will not leave power willingly. He will face a bevy of immediate indictments in January. Democrats still don't seem to understand this key factor.  He will do anything to stay in power.

Anything.

Be ready now for that, and vote early.