The high-stakes maneuver could replace Trump as the defendant—and potentially kill the defamation case altogether.

President Donald Trump is taking his $83.3 million legal battle with E. Jean Carroll to the Supreme Court—and the Justice Department is joining the fight.

Trump’s personal attorneys and the DOJ, currently led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, filed separate petitions asking the justices to overturn the staggering defamation award Carroll won over statements Trump made during his first White House term.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” Justice Department attorneys wrote, according to The Hill.

“That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”

Carroll’s attorneys declined to comment on the new filings.

Trump’s $83 Million Lifeline

The administration’s legal gambit hinges on the Westfall Act, a 1988 law designed to protect federal employees from personal liability for actions taken within the scope of their government jobs.

The Justice Department argues Trump was carrying out an official presidential function when he issued a White House statement and answered reporters’ questions about Carroll’s allegations in 2019.

If the Supreme Court agrees, the federal government could replace Trump as the defendant.

That would not simply shift the $83.3 million bill to taxpayers. It could wipe out Carroll’s claim because the Federal Tort Claims Act generally does not allow libel or slander lawsuits against the United States.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly acknowledged that consequence, writing that Carroll’s claims would be barred if the government were substituted as the defendant.

Two Appeals, Two Different Arguments

Trump and the Justice Department are traveling slightly different legal roads to reach the same destination.

Trump’s personal attorneys want the Supreme Court to rule that his 2019 statements were official presidential acts protected by immunity.

“Because accusations bearing on the President’s fitness for office are unquestionably matters of public concern, Presidential statements responding to press questions about such accusations are plainly official,” they wrote.

The DOJ does not need the justices to reach that broader constitutional question.

Instead, the department wants the Supreme Court to rule that the government can invoke the Westfall Act and replace Trump as the defendant, despite how late in the litigation the renewed request arrived.

Trump’s attorneys accused the appeals court of using “procedural contortions” to dodge the immunity question and argued that the case “cries out” for Supreme Court review, The Associated Press reported.

“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

Bondi Started The Push—Blanche Is Carrying It Forward

Trump’s first-term Justice Department initially attempted to invoke the Westfall Act after Carroll filed her lawsuit.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr certified that Trump had been acting within the scope of his office, setting off years of pretrial litigation over whether the United States could take his place in the case.

The Biden Justice Department abandoned that position in 2023.

After Trump returned to the White House, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi revived the effort in 2025 and issued a new certification supporting government substitution.

The appeals court rejected Bondi’s move, ruling that the government could not reverse course after the case had already gone to trial. It also concluded that Trump had forfeited his presidential immunity defense by failing to raise it properly at an earlier stage.

Blanche, who became acting attorney general after Bondi left the department in April 2026, is now leading the DOJ as it asks the Supreme Court to reverse those decisions. The department’s own website identifies Blanche as acting attorney general.

The DOJ argues that one administration’s decision to abandon a legal defense should not prevent a later administration from changing course—particularly when the defendant is once again the sitting president.

The department accused the appeals court of showing too much deference to the Biden administration’s decision and too little to the Trump administration’s renewed defense.

One Carroll Case Down, Another $83 Million At Stake

Carroll, a former Elle advice columnist, publicly accused Trump in 2019 of sexually assaulting her inside a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan during the mid-1990s.

Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation and said he did not know Carroll. She sued him over his public response.

The Supreme Court already rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn a separate $5 million verdict Carroll won in 2023.

In that case, a civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and later defaming her through statements he made after leaving office. The Supreme Court declined to review the verdict in June, and the money was subsequently transferred to Carroll’s legal team.

The current showdown concerns the much larger judgment from a January 2024 trial involving Trump’s 2019 statements.

That jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for a reputation-repair campaign and another $7.3 million in compensatory damages.

A federal appeals court upheld the award, although three judges later dissented when the full court refused to reconsider the case. Those judges argued that the Westfall Act should protect Trump and accused the majority of applying the law unevenly.

The payout has been delayed while Trump seeks Supreme Court review.

A Long-Shot With Enormous Stakes

The Westfall Act allows the government to replace a federal employee as the defendant when the attorney general certifies that the employee acted within the scope of the job.

Federal law, however, excludes libel and slander claims from the government’s waiver of sovereign immunity.

That makes the stakes clear: If the DOJ succeeds in substituting the United States, Carroll’s $83.3 million victory could disappear.

The Supreme Court accepts only a small fraction of the petitions it receives. The justices are expected to consider the requests during a private conference after returning from their summer recess.

But after refusing to disturb Carroll’s smaller verdict, the high court must now decide whether Trump’s return to the presidency—and the Justice Department’s extraordinary late intervention—gives the $83.3 million case a dramatically different ending.