Headlines suggesting President Donald Trump’s Justice Department was targeting E. Jean Carroll for a perjury investigation created a mess for the administration last week.
It was far from the first time the advice columnist and rape accuser caused a mess for Trump. Justice Department officials, however, helped turn this particular dust-up into a confusing reminder of the circus that surrounded Carroll’s legal crusade against the president, which began in 2019.
For nearly 24 hours after CNN reported on Wednesday that Carroll was the target of a criminal investigation, the DOJ did not correct the record and even appeared to give some media outlets the impression that the original story was somewhat accurate. The reports immediately sparked criticism from Democrats and Trump critics, who argued the DOJ was targeting one of the president’s most prominent accusers. By Thursday evening, however, the top prosecutor in northern Illinois, where the case was reportedly being built, took the rare step of publicly denying that Carroll was under investigation.
Individuals who spoke to the media about the inquiry may have received subpoenas or other requests from investigators. Those developments could have created the impression among witnesses or subpoena targets that Carroll herself was the target of the investigation, even though the Chicago division is actually focused on the entity connected to the funding of the litigation.
A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner on Friday that investigators are indeed looking into outside circumstances surrounding the perjury allegation against Carroll, but more specifically are examining funding connections to a nonprofit organization tied to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman that helped support Carroll’s litigation effort against Trump, including potential inquiries related to money laundering, or obstruction.
Carroll initially said in an October 2022 deposition that she had received no outside funding for her litigation, forcing her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, to correct the record in April 2023 court filings. Kaplan said Carroll “recollected additional information” about the fact that Hoffman, a liberal megadonor and anti-Trump critic, was paying some of her legal bills.
Investigators in Chicago are examining issues connected to that left-leaning nonprofit organization American Future Republic, which Hoffman is listed as the president over, according to Influence Watch. Public records show the organization has funneled nearly $21 million to other nonprofits organizations, most of which are left-of-center.
The same source noted that the inquiry is related to multiple questions that emerged from Carroll’s litigation, including issues surrounding testimony about outside financial support, but is not solely focused on Carroll, and had only emerged as an investigation in recent weeks.
Ahead of Carroll’s first trial in 2023, then-Trump attorney Alina Habba argued in court filings that revelations about Hoffman’s financial support for her lawsuits raised “significant questions” regarding Carroll’s credibility and motives for pursuing the litigation.
Hoffman has publicly defended the assistance.
“Supporting women’s fight for progress and justice in philanthropy, politics and business has been a longstanding priority of mine, as is supporting America against the threat of Trump,” Hoffman wrote in a LinkedIn post in 2023 after the funding arrangement became public.
Carroll’s lawsuits resulted in a yearslong controversy over an allegation for which she presented almost no evidence.
As she prepared to release her 2019 memoir, What Do We Need Men For?, Carroll alleged in a published excerpt of the book that a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan during the mid-1990s turned into a sexual assault. Trump denied the allegation several times in 2019, including in one interview in which he added that Carroll was “not my type.”
A New York jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages. The jury did not find him liable for rape. The defamation component of the first trial focused on comments Trump had made in 2022 — after his first term in the White House — again denying that he had sexually assaulted Carroll. Her lawsuit for sexual assault was made possible by New York Democrats, who passed a law in 2022 that opened up a one-time-only, one-year window to allow people who said they were sexually assaulted to sue their alleged abusers no matter how long ago the alleged attacks took place. Carroll’s alleged encounter with Trump, which she could not remember clearly enough to name the year it happened, was otherwise long past the statute of limitations.
A second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in 2024, and that defamation case stemmed from Trump’s 2019 denial. The trial for Trump’s 2019 denials came second because that lawsuit was tangled up in procedural questions about whether he should have been shielded from liability, given that he made the comments at issue while president.
Trump and his allies often highlighted instances of impartiality by the judge handling both of Carroll’s cases.
Trump’s attorneys repeatedly argued that court rulings sharply limited the evidence they could present to jurors, while U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, drew criticism after he refused Trump’s request to pause proceedings for a single day so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.
Kaplan also imposed significant limits on the evidence and testimony Trump could present to jurors. For example, Kaplan barred Trump from defending himself against any part of the rape allegation in the second defamation trial, the one that resulted in the $83 million judgment against him, because a jury had already found him liable for sexual abuse in the first trial. Kaplan also repeatedly limited arguments the defense could make regarding Carroll’s credibility and motives, even though the timing of and financial support for her lawsuits were central to Trump’s argument that she was motivated by politics.
Trump’s attorneys have argued on appeal that those rulings prevented jurors from hearing critical information and deprived him of a fair opportunity to defend himself.
Trump continues to challenge both judgments, arguing in part that the first lawsuit should never have been brought because it involved his 2019 denial of the encounter, claiming he is covered by presidential immunity.
In the case that resulted in the $5 million verdict, Trump in November asked the Supreme Court to intervene after lower courts rejected arguments that the trial was tainted by evidentiary rulings that his lawyers said introduced material designed to taint a jury against him. His petition argues jurors were improperly shown the Access Hollywood tape, heard testimony from other accusers, and were prevented from hearing certain evidence that Trump’s attorneys contend would have undermined Carroll’s credibility.
The appeal of the $83.3 million defamation judgment is following a similar path. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected Trump’s appeal and declined to rehear the case in April, Trump moved toward Supreme Court review while arguing that some statements at issue were protected by presidential immunity.
Over the past three months, the high court has rescheduled Trump’s case for consideration at least 11 times, leaving little indication of whether it will ultimately consider the appeal.
Earlier this month, the appeals court agreed to delay payment of the award pending the Supreme Court process, so long as Trump posted a $7.4 million bond in the meantime.
In December 2024, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $5 million verdict and addressed Trump’s argument that Carroll had lied about outside funding.
CHICAGO US ATTORNEY REBUTS REPORTS OF DIRECT INVESTIGATION INTO E. JEAN CARROLL
The court accepted Carroll’s explanation that she had forgotten about what it described as “limited outside funding” received years earlier and concluded that she was not personally involved in managing litigation financing.
“It showed that Ms. Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs,” the appeals court wrote.
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