Trump’s attorneys claim that E. Jean Carroll hid that LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman, a billionaire donor for Democratic causes, helped fund her defense. (Carroll’s photograph courtesy of her; LinkedIn graphic via Artur Widak/NurPhoto)
Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys tried to throw an 11th hour wrench in E. Jean Carroll’s civil rape suit by claiming she misled them about her indirect backing by a Silicon Valley billionaire: LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
On Oct. 22, 2022, E. Jean Carroll sat for a deposition in which she described Trump’s alleged sexual assault on her inside the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman in wrenching detail.
“I was shocked before because he put me against the wall but now I understood that this is — this is a battle, and he pulled down my tights,” Carroll testified.
In a less scrutinized part of the deposition, Carroll stated that her attorneys were working for a contingency fee.
Asked if anyone was paying her legal fees, she answered flatly: “No.”
With trial scheduled two weeks from now, Trump’s attorneys Joe Tacopina and Alina Habba said that Carroll has now acknowledged the statement was “inaccurate.”
“Of course, the proposition that Plaintiff has suddenly ‘recollected’ the source of her funding for this high-profile litigation—which has spanned four years, spawned two separate actions, and been before numerous state, federal, and appellate courts—is not only preposterous, it is demonstrably false,” they wrote.
Trump’s legal team said that they subsequently learned that Carroll received backing from American Future Republic, a nonprofit organization primarily backed by Hoffman. The attorneys claim that the revelation raises “troubling” and “significant questions,” which they want to probe by reopening discovery and pushing back the currently scheduled April 25th trial date.
“Hoffman is one of the largest donors to the Democratic party—reportedly ‘one of the most influential Democratic donors of the Trump era‘—and a vocal critic of [Trump] and his political policies,” the defense brief notes. “In fact, Hoffman is on record stating that he would ‘‘spend as much as [he] possibly can’ to avoid another Trump presidency, saying it would be ‘destructive to our society,’ and, since 2017, has reportedly been ‘funding groups to create a bulwark against Mr. Trump’s agenda.””
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said that they weren’t able to object to the “plainly irrelevant” question of her financing at the deposition, but she says that the timeline makes the litigation financing immaterial for a motive. The nonprofit group started offering support in September 2020, several months after Carroll filed her lawsuit in November 2019.
“We informed Trump’s counsel that Carroll has never met and has never been party to any communications (written or oral) with anyone associated with the nonprofit,” Kaplan wrote.
Trying to reach a compromise, Carroll’s legal team says, they offered Trump’s attorneys an opportunity to cross-examine her on that topic. Trump turned down that offer, and Carroll claims this exposes the latest pretrial motion as one of a long line of gambits to delay the trial.
“One thing is clear—Trump will stop at nothing to avoid having a jury hear Carroll’s claims,” Kaplan wrote.
Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who shares a name with but isn’t related to Carroll’s attorney, repeatedly shut down Trump’s previous attempts to delay the trial, but he hasn’t yet ruled on the former president’s latest request for an adjournment.
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