E. Jean Carroll, a co-founder of multiple hookup sites whom Elle fired as a columnist in 2020, has accused numerous men of sexual abuse decades after the alleged incidents supposedly happened.
Whereas other allegations didn’t go much further than the pages of her imaginative tell-alls, Carroll’s allegations against President Donald Trump ended up centering a pair of civil lawsuits — one in which she alleged that Trump sexually abused her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan back in the 1990s and the other in which she alleged defamation over Trump’s denial that the incident happened.
‘Her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false,’ Trump’s attorneys claimed.
Carroll’s legal offensive ultimately left the president on the hook for a $83.3 million jury award — but now, she may have to go on defense.
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Carroll, sources familiar with the matter told multiple publications, including CNN and the New York Times. Investigators are reportedly looking into whether the fired columnist committed perjury in testimony linked to her lawsuits against Trump.
The probe reportedly focuses on Carroll’s assertion in a 2022 deposition statement that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, which was later shown to be demonstrably false.
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Anti-Trump activist Reid Hoffman. Jason Alden/Bloomberg/Getty Images.
When asked on Oct. 14, 2022, whether anyone else was paying her legal fees, Carroll definitively answered, “No.”
A jury found Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023.
However, several weeks earlier, Carroll’s attorneys admitted in an April 10, 2023, letter that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a big-time Biden donor and anti-Trump activist, had been funding Carroll’s lawsuit, prompting Trump’s legal team to raise hell.
Attorneys for the president said in an April 13, 2023, letter to U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan — the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing the case — that the belated disclosure “raises significant concerns as to plaintiff’s bias and motive in commencing the instant lawsuit.”
Trump’s attorneys also rejected the suggestion that Carroll suddenly remembered all that money didn’t come ex nihilo:
Of course, the proposition that plaintiff has suddenly “recollected” the source of her funding for this high-profile litigation — which has spanned four years, spawned two separate actions, and been before numerous state, federal, and appellate courts — is not only preposterous, it is demonstrably false. Indeed, it simply defies logic to believe that plaintiff’s attorneys — four of whom were present at her deposition — were unaware that their own firm had “secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization” to bankroll their client’s various lawsuits and ensure their bills were being paid.
Trump’s attorneys noted in summary that Carroll “apparently perjured herself during her deposition; her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, knowing full well that her testimony was false; and then they conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months, only to disclose it on the eve of trial.”
At the time, Kaplan denied the request by Trump’s attorneys to delay the case so they could properly investigate the funding issue.
Carroll’s lawyers, meanwhile, suggested that the outside funding — from the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — was irrelevant, even though it buttressed Trump’s 2019 claim that the lawsuit was a setup intended to “carry out a political agenda.”
Carroll’s lawyers also claimed that she had nothing to do with securing the outside funding or outsider funding source.
The inquiry into Carroll was reportedly launched by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew Boutros. Having previously represented Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has allegedly recused himself from the investigation.
Carroll did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News, and the DOJ declined to comment.
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