A New York judge on Tuesday rejected an attempt by the US Department of Justice to defend President Donald Trump against a defamation lawsuit filed by an American columnist, who has accused him of raping her. 

The 76-year-old woman, E Jean Carroll has alleged that the US President had sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s. Carroll sued Trump in November last year and accused him of defamation after the president in June 2019 had denied the allegations, saying she was “totally lying” about the assault.

Last year in June, Trump had said he had never met Carroll and that she was “not my type.”

The federal Department of Justice in September asked the court if it could of Trump’s personal lawyers, Marc Kasowitz, who had earlier failed to have the suit dismissed.

The Justice Department had argued that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office or employment” when he commented on Carroll’s allegations and thus can be defended by government lawyers. 

The move if approved could dismiss the lawsuit as the government cannot be sued for defamation, however, on Tuesday district Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the department’s argument.

“His (Trump’s) comments concerned an alleged sexual assault that took place several decades before he took office, and the allegations have no relationship to the official business of the United States,” Kaplan wrote.

The court’s ruling said, “To conclude otherwise would require the court to adopt a view that virtually everything the president does is within the public interest by virtue of his office. The government has provided no support for that theory, and the court rejects it as too expansive.”

Welcoming the New York court’s decision, Carroll in a statement said, “As the judge recognized today, the question whether President Trump raped me 20 years ago in a department store is at ‘the heart’ of this lawsuit.”

“We can finally return to answering that question, and getting the truth out.”