After Donald Trump’s first term as president, during the egregious collective regime of “President” Joe Biden, the left’s legal brigades launched an unprecedented lawfare attack on their political target. In New York City, the prevailing tactic was to attack on the civil side. The reason for this was that the standard of proof is so much lower in a civil trial that victory was assured in a town with judges and juries as leftist as NYC’s.
The tactic was effective. In 2024, N.Y. Attorney General Letitia "Big Tish" James and Judge Arthur Engoron hit pay dirt with a nearly half-a-billion-dollar judgment against Trump for allegedly committing some sort of real estate fraud. A year later, an appeals court tossed the absurd monetary penalty but upheld the fraud finding, including a three-year ban on Trump family members from leading businesses in the state and other major inconveniences to the business powerhouse clan. Trump has turned to New York State's highest court to overturn the remainder of the flimsy case.
Then there was the E. Jean Carroll rape fantasy (in my opinion — don't sue me!) involving Trump. In 2019, Carroll released a memoir for some reason, even though I can't say I'd ever heard of her before then. In it, she accused Trump of unleashing his unbridled lust on her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in either 1995 or 1996. Recall that at that time, Trump was a hugely popular celebrity tycoon in NYC, so it's conceivable that a grasping nobody might fixate on him — especially an admitted rape fantasist like Carroll.
BREAKING: A Manhattan jury just found Donald Trump liable in a civil lawsuit for E. Jean Carroll's claims of abuse and defamation but REJECTS her claim that he raped her in the 90s.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 9, 2023
She's the lady who said "rape is sexy" on CNN.
Her lawsuit was also entirely funded by Democrat… pic.twitter.com/8fTgMaI7Aj
To publicize her otherwise completely unnoteworthy book, Carroll repeated her Trump fantasy claim in an excerpt in New York magazine. Trump said it never happened and that Carroll was a liar. She sued him for defamation, a suit that got a huge boost a couple years later when the state and a major donor stepped in to push validation of her underlying rape and assault claims.
Recall that New York State deliberately suspended the statute of limitations for one year via New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which was conveniently active from Nov. 24, 2022, to Nov. 24, 2023. Carroll filed her suit within minutes of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D, natch) signing the Act into law. Why, it's almost as if the whole thing was choreographed!
Recall also that LinkedIn co-founder and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman pumped $7 million into the legal venture via his American Future Republic nonprofit, which gave the payola to Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, for fees and expenses.
When the weaponized prosecution dust had settled, Trump had been found liable for unwanted kissing and digital violation but not rape, and for defamation, for calling Carroll a liar. Judgments against him totaled $83.3 million, because that's a totally realistic assessment of how much money Carroll would have made, had Trump not defamed her.
Trump is now forced to appeal an otherwise mundane harassment case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to get a fair hearing. But meanwhile, there is a spicy new development.
CNN is reporting (much to its chagrin, no doubt) that the DOJ is investigating whether Carroll lied under oath — perjured herself — during her quest to take down Orange Man Bad:
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president – one alleging he sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and a second for defaming her when in 2019 he repeatedly denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type and claimed she made it up to boost sales of a book.
Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll, 82, that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses.
The crux of the case looks like this:
Senior leaders at the Justice Department referred the investigation to federal prosecutors in Chicago, according to two sources familiar with the matter. While Carroll’s deposition took place in New York, one of the individuals who helped cover some of Carroll’s legal fees, Hoffman, has a nonprofit based in Chicago.
Hoffman’s support of the case caught Trump’s attorneys off guard when it came to light on the eve of trial.
In a 2022 videotaped deposition, Carroll told then-Trump attorney Alina Habba that no one else was paying for her legal fees. But two weeks before the trial Carroll’s attorneys informed the judge and Trump’s lawyers that they secured funding from Hoffman’s nonprofit.
Carroll’s lawyers said she never met nor had conversations with anyone associated with the nonprofit. Habba said in court at the time that Carroll’s team “conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months.”
The judge permitted Trump’s attorneys to question Carroll again in a deposition, which has not been made public.
When the trial began two weeks later Judge Lewis Kaplan said he saw no issue with Carroll’s credibility and blocked the lawyers from asking about Hoffman’s funding.
CNN was quick to frame the development as somehow unfair:
The probe is the latest move in the department’s ceaseless, and somewhat strained, efforts to meet Trump’s demands to target his long-standing personal foes.
"Oh noes! Weaponized Bad Orange Man Revenge Tour!" But let's dispense with that nonsense once and for all:
1. Carroll's entire case against Trump was a weaponized revenge attack to begin with — committed by the entire leftist legal system in New York, working in concert, in revenge for the pure hatred Trump triggered within them; and
2. Don't come at me with claims that Carroll is only under this kind of scrutiny because she went after a president. In fact, that's exactly why she should be under intense scrutiny. A lawsuit at this level is divisive and painful for the entire nation, so it had damn well better be solid, in light of its destabilizing and disunifying effects.
Not to mention, there's also the absurdly high stack of money the court awarded Carroll; that, too, warrants a high burden of proof.
Related: The Awful Truth: Donald Trump Must Look Over His Shoulder for the Rest of His Life
And one more thing: Why is Trump slammed with defamation penalties for saying Carroll is lying, but Carroll isn't in trouble for saying Trump raped her — when even the biased jury in this biased case found that he was not liable for that particular act? After all, George Stephanopoulos and ABC paid a hefty price for calling Trump a rapist. And since the jury found that Trump is innocent of that charge, but Carroll still says he did it, doesn't that actually make her a liar? So how is it libelous for Trump to call her that?
And how is she not liable for libel against Trump, as Stephanopoulos was?
Anyone with eyes can see that the entire sorry episode should be flushed down the toilet, into the fetid sewer with the husks of other discredited lawfare attacks against Trump, where it belongs.
If the Justice Department can prove that Carroll lied under oath — in addition to her lying that Trump raped her, when a New York jury found that he did not — then she is not a credible witness, and her false testimony against a historically great figure collapses.
Not to mention, Carroll herself could be in some trouble. Although there is no minimum required sentence, federal perjury conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1621 carries up to five years in federal prison and/or a fine — typically up to $250,000 for individuals, but that could also be twice the gain/loss involved. Wouldn't it be great if the DOJ could try the case somewhere as rigged to the right as NYC is to the left? How funny would it be if Carroll were stuck in the federal slammer for five years and owed $166.6 million?
I know, I know. That's an absurd fantasy — even more absurd than imagining a billionaire playboy who could have any woman he wanted forced himself upon a flaky columnist in a department store dressing room.
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