Who is E Jean Carroll? Journalist under DOJ criminal investigation accuses Trump of sexual abuse | Today’s news
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday opened a criminal investigation against E Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault.
Case E Jean Carroll
The investigation against Carroll focuses on whether she perjured herself in connection with her two civil lawsuits against Trump: one alleging he sexually assaulted her at a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and the other for defaming her when he repeatedly denied the assault in 2019, said she wasn’t his type and claimed she made it up to boost sales, CNN reported.
The plaintiffs’ arguments center on a 2022 deposition in which Carroll, 82, said she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. However, it later emerged that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some of her legal fees and related expenses.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recused himself from Carroll’s case because he worked as one of Trump’s personal attorneys on her appeals, according to a source familiar with the matter. Blanche did not attend meetings or participate in discussions about the investigation, and other officials in the deputy attorney general’s office are overseeing the investigation.
The investigation was turned over to federal prosecutors in Chicago, even though Carroll’s deposition took place in New York.
The report suggests the criminal investigation against Carroll is the latest step in the department’s relentless and at times tense effort to comply with Trump’s demands to target his longtime personal adversaries.
Who is E Jean Carroll?
Carroll is a journalist and author who has written for ESQUIRE and OUTSIDE magazines, prominent lifestyle publications. According to her website, she became the first woman to walk from Telefomin, Papua New Guinea, across the Star Mountains to the Irian Jaya border.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Carroll attended Indiana University Bloomington and Stanford University. Between 1993 and 2020, she worked as a commentator for ELLE magazine. She has been working as a contributing writer for The Atlantic since July 2020. In addition to writing for The Atlantic, she also wrote for New York and Vanity Fair and was the first editor for Playboy.
Carroll shared details about her personal life on her website, writing that she had two husbands and at least 20 dogs. He also claims to be “the first person to hold Donald Trump accountable for his lies since he became president.”
What did E Jean Carroll accuse Trump of?
According to media reports, Carroll accused the US president of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, which Trump denied and called a “concocted hoax”.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and awarded her five million dollars in damages. In 2024, another jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in a defamation case after the US president repeatedly attacked her publicly.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to delay paying the defamation award until the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to hear his appeal.
