The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to multiple reports.
Carroll has sued Trump twice. She first alleged he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and second alleged he defamed her in his denial of the alleged sexual assault. Trump denies her claims.
The DOJ’s investigation into Carroll centers on whether she committed perjury during a 2022 deposition, during which she claimed she was not receiving outside money for her cases against Trump, according to CNN.
Records released in 2023 showed that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, bankrolled Carroll’s defamation and sexual assault cases against Trump. Hoffman, a Democratic donor, made headlines for his financial ties to Carroll at the time due to Carroll’s testimony that no one else was paying her legal fees for her.
In October 2022, Alina Habba, Trump’s personal attorney in Carroll’s second lawsuit, asked during a deposition, “Is anyone else paying your legal fees, Ms. Carroll?” Carroll subsequently responded, “No.” Habba argued in a 2023 court filing, once the contributions from Hoffman’s nonprofit came to light, that Carroll “apparently perjured herself during her deposition.”
“In short, Plaintiff 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,” Habba argued after the Hoffman funding came to light in 2023.
Carroll’s counsel argued in response that “Carroll recollected additional information” relating to the deposition exchange with Habba.
“We promptly disclosed to Trump’s counsel that, while Carroll stands by her testimony about this being a contingency fee case, she now recalls that her counsel at some point secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to cover certain expenses and fees,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote in a 2023 filing.
Representatives for Carroll did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
An appeals court previously found, in relation to Carroll’s testimony in question, that “Carroll plausibly represented that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained in September 2020 when this question was first posed to her in 2022.”
The DOJ’s investigation into Carroll is reportedly under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, according to CBS News.
APPEALS COURT SPARES TRUMP FROM PAYING $83 MILLION DEFAMATION AWARD TO E. JEAN CARROLL — FOR NOW
Regarding the lawsuits between Trump and Carroll, lower courts have found Trump liable, but Trump has appealed both decisions to the Supreme Court and is awaiting the court to take up the cases. In the first case, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million. In the second case, the jury ordered Trump to pay $83 million in a defamation award.
The Justice Department’s reported investigation into Carroll is the latest into one of the president’s perceived enemies, following its reported mortgage fraud investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.