Quick summary
The Justice Department is looking into whether writer E. Jean Carroll may have lied under oath about receiving outside money for her lawsuits against Donald Trump. The inquiry is being handled out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois, and an acting senior official tied to some of the earlier litigation is recused.
What’s the investigation about?
At the heart of the probe: a 2022 deposition in which Carroll said she didn’t get outside funding for her legal battle. Prosecutors are now examining whether that statement was false — in other words, whether it rises to the level of perjury. The case has prompted media reporting and outreach to the prosecutors and Carroll’s former lawyer for comment.
The lawsuits, in plain English
Carroll sued Trump in two separate civil actions: one originally over a 2019 article and later another that added a claim under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. Juries found Trump liable in two rounds of trials — one in 2023 that resulted in about $5 million in damages for sexual assault and related remarks, and another in 2024 that produced an $83.3 million defamation judgment. Those verdicts were later upheld on appeal.
The money question (and Reid Hoffman)
After Carroll testified she had no outside financing, court filings revealed that tech billionaire Reid Hoffman had helped cover some legal costs. That disclosure is what generated the dispute: did Carroll forget about the assistance, was she unaware of it, or did she misstate things on purpose? An appeals court noted she plausibly said she’d forgotten the limited funding and suggested she wasn’t personally handling the bookkeeping for who paid the bills.
People are talking — and pushing back
Trump has long denied Carroll’s sexual-assault allegations. Carroll has maintained her account of an incident in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s, which she wrote about in 2019. Hoffman, when asked in public about helping with legal fees, said he didn’t spur the lawsuit and only joined in after it had already been filed, explaining that his team thought her voice should be heard against a more powerful opponent.
Where this leaves things
The Justice Department’s review is ongoing. Investigations like this can take time, and a review into deposition testimony is a different animal than the civil trials that produced multimillion-dollar judgments. For now, it’s a legal subplot to an already headline-grabbing saga — and the plot twists keep coming.
Final thought (because we could all use one)
Legal dramas: they’ve got juries, appeals, billionaire backers, and now perjury questions. It’s courtroom TV without the commercial breaks — but with actual consequences. Stay tuned.
