{"id":253874,"date":"2026-06-03T16:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/253874\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T16:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:08:16","slug":"editorial-revictimizing-e-jean-carroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/253874\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: Revictimizing E. Jean Carroll"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal jury in Manhattan took only three hours of deliberations in May 2023 to decide that Donald\u00a0J. Trump had sexually abused<\/a> journalist E. Jean Carroll during an encounter at the Bergdorf Goodman department store three decades ago. Eight months later, another jury determined that Mr. Trump had\u00a0defamed<\/a> Ms. Carroll in remarks denying her account. Between those two verdicts, Ms. Carroll is owed $88.3 million by the sitting president, who is appealing those judgments.<\/p>\n

Last month, it was reported that Mr. Trump\u2019s Justice Department was investigating Ms. Carroll\u2019s civil action against Mr. Trump \u2014 yet another deployment of taxpayer-funded resources to pursue one of Mr. Trump\u2019s legal antagonists.<\/p>\n

Multiple news outlets said that prosecutors are particularly interested in Ms. Carroll\u2019s statements in a deposition about whether her lawsuit had been supported by outside donors. Ms. Carroll\u2019s attorneys later told the judge that the plaintiff wanted to correct her statements to acknowledge that her case had received funding from a nonprofit run by Reid Hoffman, a supporter of numerous Democratic causes. Such funding is perfectly legal, and has about as much to do with what happened between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump as whether it was rainy or sunny on the day in question.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department is currently run by Todd Blanche, who represented Mr. Trump in his appeals in the Carroll case; Mr. Blanche says he has recused himself from any role in the agency\u2019s inquiry into the 82-year-old journalist\u2019s lawsuit. Rather than try to find a special counsel to investigate a matter so close to the occupant of the White House, the Justice Department handed it to Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.<\/p>\n

Mr. Boutros’\u00a013-month tenure has been one of the most chaotic of the Trump administration’s operation of federal justice, which is really saying something. Just a week before news broke of the Carroll investigation, the prosecutor was forced to acknowledge that members of his team had\u00a0bungled the grand jury proceedings <\/a>in the \u201cBroadview Six\u201d case \u2014 involving arrests at a Chicago anti-ICE protest \u2014 so badly that the indictments would be dismissed with prejudice. If the cold fury of the federal judge who was confronted by these prosecutorial antics is any indication, it seems possible this episode will cost a few attorneys their jobs, if not their law licenses. Mr. Boutros’\u00a0staff was already so depleted that, as The New York Times reported<\/a>, he sent out a letter to retired prosecutors begging them to rejoin the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are doubtful the recent news will aid his recruitment efforts.\u00a0Because even public officials can only take so much opprobrium, Mr. Boutros\u00a0was moved to issue a carefully worded statement\u00a0<\/a>that his office \u201chas not opened \u2014 and has never opened \u2014 a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr. Hoffman, a billionaire, wrote<\/a> in response to the news of the probe that Mr. Trump \u201ccannot be allowed to use the full weight and power of the U.S. government to come after women who speak up, or anyone who supports them in doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in a season that has seen the White House knocking over the ethical standards of federal justice like so many bowling pins, this pursuit remains shocking \u2014 a disgusting continuation of Mr. Trump’s decades-long pattern of debasement and hubris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal jury in Manhattan took only three hours of deliberations in May 2023 to decide that Donald\u00a0J.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[304,75,84,83,9,24,63,12522],"class_list":["post-253874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-editorial","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opiniontu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}