United States ‘cannot replace Trump in columnist’s defamation lawsuit’

The decision by district judge Lewis A Kaplan came after the US justice department argued that the United States should replace Mr Trump as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E Jean Carroll

E Jean Carroll claims Donald Trump raped her (AP)

A federal judge has denied President Donald Trump’s request that the United States should replace him as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit which alleges he raped a woman in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

The decision by district judge Lewis A Kaplan came after the US justice department argued that the United States – and by extension the American people – should replace Mr Trump as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E Jean Carroll.