The Trump administration’s reported criminal investigation into writer E. Jean Carroll—the latest highly politicized and controversial use of his Department of Justice to pursue the president’s perceived enemies—comes as Trump is running out of options to avoid paying nearly $100 million in damages (and counting) to the writer, with the Supreme Court poised to rule on whether it considers Trump’s appeal of the two verdicts against him.
E. Jean Carroll attends Equality Now's Make Equality Reality Gala on October 8, 2024 in New York City.
Getty Images
The Justice Department launched a criminal inquiry into Carroll and whether she committed perjury when testifying in a deposition against Trump.
Carroll has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and subsequently defaming her after she went public with her allegations, first winning $5 million at trial for defamation and assault, and then another $83.3 million for defamation in a separate case.
Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations against him and tried to appeal both verdicts but has been unsuccessful in both cases, putting him on the verge of having to pay out millions.
The Supreme Court is now deliberating on whether to take up the first $5 million verdict against Trump, though justices have delayed ruling on the issue for months since the president first asked the court to hear the case in November.
He’s also planning to ask justices to take up the other verdict after an appeals court rejected his request to rehear the case, his attorneys said in a May court filing, asking the court to let him hold off on paying Carroll until the Supreme Court weighs in.
Trump is also trying to have the federal government become a party in that second case—so that Carroll would be suing Trump in his role as president, rather than as a private citizen—which would make the case easier to have thrown out.
$98.5 million. That’s how much Trump now owes Carroll in the two cases combined as interest has accrued on the judgments, with $5.8 million now owed in the first case that went to trial and $92.7 million in the second. As a condition for letting Trump hold off on paying Carroll while he goes to the Supreme Court in the second case, Carroll’s attorneys also asked the appeals court to add on an extra $7.5 million to Trump’s bond. That will account for interest that could accrue through October 2027, in case the Supreme Court takes a while to rule on the case’s fate.
There’s so far no clear indication on when the Supreme Court could rule on taking up Carroll’s cases against the president: Trump has yet to formally ask the court to consider the $83.3 million verdict, and justices have punted for months on deciding the $5 million case’s fate. The court has deferred considering Carroll’s case at their weekly conferences 12 times, according to CNN, most recently last week.
According to CNN, the Trump administration’s investigation into Carroll focuses on comments she made in a 2022 deposition alleging there was no third party paying her legal fees—and her lawyers would only be paid if she won—and she was not clear who was covering expenses in the case. Before her first trial against Trump, however, her lawyers disclosed she had received some funding from the nonprofit American Future Republic, which is tied to Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman. One of Hoffman’s advisors has previously said the billionaire gives money to American Future Republic without knowing specifically the cases that money will support—and in this case, Hoffman gave money before Carroll’s case was filed—and that clients receiving funds from the nonprofit typically do not know the identity of the donors. Carroll’s attorneys have also maintained the writer didn’t meet or speak with anyone from American Future Republic, and claimed Carroll only recalled after she gave her deposition that “her counsel at some point secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to cover certain expenses and fees.” An appeals court previously ruled there is “no evidence to suggest that Ms. Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder, received an invoice showing the arrangement before or after her counsel received the outside funding, or had discussed the arrangement with anyone between learning of it in September 2020 and being deposed in October 2022.” CNN notes Trump’s attorneys deposed Carroll again about the donation, but that transcript hasn’t been publicly released, and the judge barred the president’s attorneys from asking about it at trial.
Carroll alleged Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, and the writer first went public with her allegations during Trump’s first term in 2019. Trump has strongly denied her accusations against him and responded by publicly criticizing Carroll, whom he said was not his “type.” The writer subsequently sued Trump for defamation, and then filed a second lawsuit under New York’s Adult Survivors Act for both defamation and assault while the first one got tied up in court. That second lawsuit ended up going to trial first, resulting in the $5 million verdict, as a jury found Trump liable for defamation and assault, but not raping Carroll. Since the two lawsuits were based on substantially similar comments Trump had made about Carroll, the jury at the second trial didn’t have to determine whether Trump defamed the writer, but only how much he should pay her in damages for doing so. The jury ordered him to pay $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages, which are meant to dissuade Trump from further defaming Carroll. Trump has continued to attack Carroll even since being ordered to pay millions for defaming her, and Carroll’s attorneys have not ruled out bringing further litigation.
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