Hi there, it's Allison. I'm out this week, but the Kenny do that team wanted to make sure that you didn't miss the Washington Post coverage of Breaking Politics news.

So here's a segment from the Post's Daily News Show post reports post reports publishes every weekday afternoon. So if you like what you hear, subscribe at postreports.com. Here's the news.

I got a knee up high enough to push him out and off. I don't really guess it was, it was a very short amount of time that he had penetrated. It was general against my will.

Donald Trump would later deny those allegations. I have no idea who this woman is. This is a woman who's also accused of another thing.

You know, it is a totally false accusation.

E. Jean Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against him, essentially alleging that his denial was false and he was defaming her and thus he owed her damages.

I'm Matt Zapatowski. I cover the Justice Department for the Post. This kind of exploded into the news last night because as the case seemed to be on course for discovery and just proceedings in New York State Court, the Justice Department intervened moving the case to federal court and asking a federal judge to substitute the US government as the defendant in the case instead of President Trump personally.

So I think in order to understand why this is significant, it's worth like thinking out how this would play out if this weren't the President.

Like if Donald Trump were just regular Donald Trump and being sued by someone for defamation, how would this case play out in normal circumstances?

Well, I think that's a complicated question. If Donald Trump were not the President and he were just a businessman with no affiliation with the government, then this case would just proceed through state court.

You know, the Justice Department certainly wouldn't get involved in a defamation lawsuit involving a private citizen.

If Donald Trump were not the President but he worked for the government, you might see an action like this.

You know, the Justice Department does pretty routinely intervene in state lawsuits when they involve government employees to kind of take over them.

But the fact that this is now going to be playing out in federal court rather than state court, why are some people concerned about that?

Well, they're concerned for a couple reasons. One, the reason that the Justice Department is asking to move this to federal court and is asking to make the US, the government, the defendant rather than President Trump is they're saying he was acting in the scope of his job when he made these comments saying that what Jean Carroll describes did not happen.

So people are sort of outraged like how is that on the job conduct? Why should Justice Department lawyers beginning involved?

What at the end of the day is a dispute between two people about what happened two decades ago? Like how does that implicate on the job?

Conduct. The Justice Department argues what court precedent says it does. Basically, if you're a federal employee, almost anything you say or do while on the job can count as on the job conduct.

So we have to intervene here. The attorney general actually just spoke at a press conference and said, look, the case law is very clear because we are a representative democracy officials who are elected.

And answer press questions while they're in office, even if those questions relate to their personal activity and could bear upon their personal fitness is in fact in the course of federal employment and can be therefore certified under the Westfall Act.

And we have a specific case where someone was accused of defaming somebody a congressman and courts determined that counts as on the job conduct even though it had to do with something going on in that congressman's personal life.

But then presumably if the president is not going to be defended by the Department of Justice rather than by his own personal lawyers, taxpayers are the ones who are now paying for his defense.

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