A Trump legal problem becomes a Biden administration problem

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the North Carolina GOP convention dinner in Greenville, North Carolina, U.S. June 5, 2021. Photo by Jonathan Drake/Reuters.

Before the election, the Department of Justice under President Trump was at work defending him in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, arguing that when Trump denied Carroll’s accusation that he had raped her, he did so in his official capacity as president, and therefore he couldn’t be sued. It’s customary for the Department of Justice to represent the president in situations like this, though a federal judge rejected it. The Trump DOJ appealed, but after he lost the election, there was a question about whether the DOJ under Biden would continue the appeal. Carroll and her lawyers were strongly opposed. Well, now the Department of Justice under President Biden has spoken: they will continue to represent the former president in this case. Why? Was this unexpected? 

Ken and Josh discuss that, plus the audio of Rudy Giuliani pressuring Ukrainian officials to announce investigations into Joe Biden’s work in Ukraine and whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, if it’s a sweet gig to be a special master, how you go about searching through millions of documents anyways, messing up a PDF and hurting the opposing party, serving subpoena realness and more. 

Credits

Producer:

Sara Fay