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The department’s request to represent Mr. Trump in the case is in keeping with other arguments that the president has made in state court in New York, said Ben Berwick, a former Justice Department lawyer who now works at Protect Democracy, a legal group that is involved in multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration.

“The president has argued in multiple cases that he is immune from civil lawsuits in state courts, and at every turn that argument has been rejected,” Mr. Berwick said. The president has fought cases in New York against his company and his foundation, among other matters.

But Justice Verna L. Saunders of State Supreme Court in Manhattan recently rejected those arguments, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found Mr. Trump could not block a subpoena for his tax returns by the Manhattan prosecutors.

A White House official said Tuesday night that precedent existed under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the Justice Department to step in and defend Mr. Trump in the newly chosen venue: the Federal District Court in Manhattan. Ms. Carroll’s case will immediately be moved to federal court and her lawyers will have to ask a judge there to return the matter to state court.

The closest similar case came in 2005, Mr. Vladeck said, when a federal court in Washington ruled that government lawyers could defend Cass Ballenger, then a Republican representative from North Carolina, in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Mr. Vladeck said that while it was fairly uncommon for the Justice Department to assume the defense of a private matter on behalf of any government official, it was even more extraordinary for department lawyers to seek to shield Mr. Trump’s personal behavior behind a screen of “sovereign immunity.” If the federal judge in Manhattan assigned to the case agreed with the department’s arguments, Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit would effectively be over, Mr. Vladeck said.

Some current and former Justice Department lawyers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, echoed Mr. Vladeck’s concerns, saying they were stunned that the department had been asked to defend Mr. Trump in Ms. Carroll’s case. By moving to take control of the matter, the department had raised a critical question, the lawyers said: Was it truly within the scope of a president’s duties to comment on the physical appearance of a woman who had accused him of rape?