A Manhattan jury slapped President Trump with an 83 million dollar verdict in a defamation case widely seen as trumped up.
Someone in Trump's own Justice Department just took a closer look at the laws.
The rarely used 1988 law they found could make that entire judgment vanish for good.
DOJ Wants to Swap Itself In and Kill Carroll's Case Under a 1988 Law
The Justice Department filed its own petition with the Supreme Court, taking direct aim at the $83 million judgment.
DOJ lawyers want the justices to invoke the Westfall Act, a 1988 statute built to shield federal workers from personal lawsuits over things they did on the job.
If the Court agrees, the United States government replaces Trump as the defendant.
That single swap kills Carroll's case outright, because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.
DOJ warned the justices that without their intervention, "the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability," and argued that liability stems from conduct squarely inside his federal job.
That defamation lawsuit turned into an $83.3 million weapon against Trump, and his own government just found the legal off ramp.
The case traces back to 2019, when Trump was president and reporters asked him about Carroll's sexual assault allegation from the 1990s.
Trump denied it, called her claim false, and said she wasn't his type.
A Manhattan jury didn't buy his defense and hit him with the massive verdict in January 2024.
Trump's Lawyers Say No President Has Ever Faced Damages Like This
Trump's personal legal team filed a separate petition making an even bigger argument.
They say answering a reporter's question about your fitness for office is a core presidential function, not a private act.
Their argument boils down to this: a president has never once been made personally liable for money damages tied to his time in office, and that fact alone should terrify anyone who thinks judges get to punish a president for talking to the press.
A three-judge Second Circuit panel – Judges Chin, Merriam, and Kahn – already rejected the Westfall Act argument once, ruling in August 2025 that the switch came too late and that Trump and the government had waived their shot at it by not asking the trial court first.
Obama-appointed Judge Denny Chin also ruled separately that Trump waited too long to raise presidential immunity and forfeited that defense too.
A Democrat-appointed judge got to write the opinion deciding the scope of a sitting president's constitutional protections before the Supreme Court ever weighed in.
That's not law.
That's a judge picking a side.
Carroll's team has already banked one win from this saga.
The Supreme Court declined last month to hear Trump's appeal of a separate $5 million verdict from an earlier trial, and that payout has already been transferred to Carroll's law firm.
Now the much bigger $83.3 million judgment hangs entirely on what nine justices decide once they return from summer recess.
A Democratic Megadonor Was Bankrolling Carroll All Along
Carroll's litigation has never been just about one writer and her allegations.
Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire and prominent Democratic donor, funneled roughly $7 million to Carroll's legal team through a nonprofit, according to Townhall.
That funding stayed hidden until weeks before her first trial in 2023, after Carroll testified under oath that nobody else was covering her legal bills.
The Justice Department is now investigating whether that testimony amounted to perjury.
The Westfall Act Wasn't Built for This Fight
This case is about more than one writer's defamation claim.
Trump has been here before with Carroll, and he made his feelings clear after the Court refused to hear his last appeal, calling it a "Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met."
If the justices pass on this case the way they passed on the last one, Trump owes the full $83.3 million with no court left to appeal to.
Think about what that means in practice.
Every future president would have to weigh a hundred million dollar jury verdict every time a reporter asks an uncomfortable question at a press conference.
That's not accountability, that's a blueprint for turning press briefings into legal minefields for any Republican who dares defend himself.
The Westfall Act was written to protect ordinary federal employees doing their jobs, not to settle whether a president answering reporters gets treated the same way.
Either the justices draw that line now, or every hostile plaintiff in America learns the courts will let a jury turn a press conference answer into a personal fortune.
Sources:
- Paul Bois, "Trump Department of Justice Appeals E. Jean Carroll Lawsuit to SCOTUS," Breitbart, July 29, 2026.
- "Trump Says He Will 'Continue the Fight' After Supreme Court Declines to Review Carroll Abuse Verdict," Fox News, June 29, 2026.
- Jay Rogers, "The Carroll Case Still Deserves a Second Look," Townhall, July 26, 2026.
- Carroll v. Trump, No. 24-644, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Aug. 8, 2025.
