Of Course They're Going After E. Jean Carroll
And it's just more proof that this administration is dangerous to women.
Last week, CNN broke the story that the Justice Department would be opening a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old iconic journalist who successfully sued Donald Trump — twice.
It has been more than two years since she prevailed in back-to-back civil lawsuits against him, winning a $5 million verdict in May 2023, followed by another $83.3 million in January 2024. The first jury found Trump liable for committing sexual abuse in a department store dressing room in 1996, as well as defamation for saying Carroll lied about it. The second case, brought because he just wouldn’t stop with the defamation, multiplied the damages exponentially.
DOJ’s latest claim is spurious: Carroll committed perjury during a deposition in how she answered questions about her lawyers’ fees. (In particular, DOJ is hyper-focused on payments made by Reid Hoffman’s non-profit, American Future Republic.) Note that Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to undo the damages after a federal appeals court upheld the judgment in late 2024 (and in so doing, specifically referred to the “degree of reprehensibility of Trump’s conduct as remarkably high and perhaps unprecedented”). The $83.3 million award remains on hold; according to Slate, SCOTUS has rescheduled the case 11 times.
The timing of the DOJ announcement should come as no surprise, at least from a public relations point of view. Ask E. Jean, the new documentary about Carroll’s life, including the court cases, premiered days prior (reviewed here by The Contrarian). After debuting at the Telluride Film Festival last year without much fanfare, the film is now selling out theaters, garnering high-profile coverage and reviews, and likely embarrassing the president even more than his colossal legal defeat.
Meanwhile, among legal analysts there is widespread agreement that DOJ has no legitimate basis for investigating Carroll. But that is hardly the point when it comes to this administration, especially the weaponization of the Justice Department now led by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche who represented Trump personally in the Carroll case (and supposedly is recused from this investigation). The message is clear. When women deign to fight back, the president and his acolytes will pivot directly to the tactic they know best: publicly sanctioned intimidation.
The depth of gratitude we owe to E. Jean Carroll, her lawyer Robbie Kaplan, and Ask E. Jean documentary filmmaker Ivy Meeropol cannot be overstated. They are shining a light for women in the crosshairs of MAGA’s systemic misogyny.
Consider the ongoing horrific mistreatment of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors, who have been demanding justice in the face of breach upon breach — botched redactions, privacy violations, and a massive failure of accountability. In recent weeks, Blanche has testified before several congressional committees, insisting that he’s willing to meet with the women and their lawyers, the bare modicum of respect. And yet, as Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) retorted, the only woman Blanche is “taking good care of [is] Ghislaine Maxwell, but will not meet with the other survivors who want to tell their story.”
In a bold public statement, a group of survivors responded: “We should not have to be this persistent to engage with DOJ, the department responsible for handling the Epstein files, protecting their privacy, and answering for years of secrecy and failure. The burden is not on us to keep making reports. It is on DOJ to investigate credible allegations against perpetrators and co-conspirators, and to account for the government’s mishandling of these matters.”
The rot is hardly limited to the pursuits of DOJ. Notably, the president has thrown his weight behind the Senate candidacy of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office just freed a local attorney convicted of child sex crimes, accepting a shockingly light sentence that included less than 60 days in county jail. MAGA crows endlessly about its reverence for moms, for fertility, for kids, for families, but it is more than clear that power is its only currency.
I’ve been fascinated to see certain loyalists — Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Nancy Mace (R-SC), among them — claim the mantel of #MeToo, argue that survivors come first, even pressure for resignations from Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-OH) after sex scandals became public. “This is not a party issue,” Mace stated in April. “Republican or Democrat, if you are abusing the public trust or covering up your misconduct on the taxpayer’s dime, you should be brought into the light and held accountable. No exceptions.”
And yet here we are, with plenty of exceptions — those of the White House occupant the most egregious of all. The Trump administration’s latest move to deploy Justice Department investigators against Carroll is not only an attempt to distort the rule of law to vilify her and her colleagues, but it also sends a clear signal to all of us. Go public, risk retaliation.
Not on our watch, Contrarians. This isn’t just dangerous for women. It strikes at the very heart of a functioning democracy.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.
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