As Donald Trump builds a UFC ring at the White House, he’s still using the power of his office to target and punish his enemies. His “enemies” include E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for raping her and defaming her. The rape happened in the 1990s, and after Carroll told her story during Trump’s first term, he spent several years defaming her in interviews and on social media. Carroll was awarded more than $83 million and it’s because of her civil lawsuit that we can say that Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Even after Carroll won her lawsuit, Trump kept trying to get the verdict overturned, to no avail. So now Trump’s useful idiots, Kash Patel and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche are “investigating” the woman who successfully sued Trump for rape and defamation.

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.

Carroll’s team declined to comment for this story. Attempts to reach Hoffman on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

“We can confirm that no U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to investigate any case relating to the subject matter of CNN’s inquiry,” a Justice Department spokesperson told CNN. “We will not comment beyond that.”

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. Under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the department has pushed to speed up Trump’s campaign of retribution. But the cases he’s brought since taking the reins of the department in April have been heavily criticized and are likely to face challenges in court over allegations of politicization. But Blanche has been recused from this matter because he worked as one of Trump’s personal attorneys on the Carroll appeals, according to a source familiar with the matter. Blanche has not attended meetings or been involved in discussions about the investigations, and the investigation is being overseen by other officials in the deputy attorney general’s office.

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.

Caroll is still embroiled in multiple legal battles with the president. Juries awarded Carroll millions of dollars in damages, which the president is appealing. Trump has appealed the $5 million sexual abuse case judgement to the Supreme Court and has pledged to do the same with the $83 million defamation case. The Supreme Court has deferred its decision on whether to take up Trump’s appeal twelve times. The most recent deferral was made Wednesday morning.

[From CNN]

This is despicable. E. Jean Carroll has been so brave and so tough, and she’s one of the few people to actually bring Trump to account and do so through the courts. In the CNN story, there’s further discussion of the “issue” being investigated, the nonsense “perjury” claim – Trump’s lawyers had an issue with it in real time, and it was dealt with by the judge, who said that Carroll’s late admission wasn’t relevant to the case. Because it’s not – having a nonprofit help out on legal fees is quite common, and Carroll corrected the record before the trial even moved forward. It’s not really about perjury, it’s about trying to further punish the woman he raped and then endlessly defamed.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.