By David A. Graham
Thursday, May 28, 2026
No White House is immune to hypocrisy. What makes the
Trump administration’s approach to justice so astonishing is not just the depth
of the hypocrisy but its brazenness.
Last night, CNN
reported that the Department of Justice is pursuing a criminal
investigation against E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused Donald Trump
of raping her in the 1990s, and won nearly $90 million in civil judgments
against him. The probe reportedly focuses on whether Carroll committed perjury
during her testimony related to two civil lawsuits against him, both of which
she won.
The news comes less than 10 days after Trump—putatively
acting as a private citizen—announced an agreement with that same Justice
Department to create a $1.8
billion slush fund to reward his political allies, potentially including
those who sacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“The use of government power to target individuals or
entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, or ideological reasons
should not be tolerated by any Administration,” the DOJ official Trent McCotter
said while announcing the settlement. That quote came in a written statement,
which mercifully freed him from having to keep a straight face while saying it.
In truth, using government power to target individuals for political and
personal reasons seems like an apt description of the probe into Carroll as
well as many of the Justice Department’s steps in recent months.
Carroll’s lawsuits infuriated Trump. The president has
been accused of sexual assault by many women; he has denied all accusations,
although he also boasts about nonconsensual groping in the infamous Access
Hollywood tape. Carroll, however, brought a case where a court actually
found him liable for sexual abuse. Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote
that although “Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning
of the New York Penal Law,” the jury found that Trump “did exactly that” in the
common understanding of “rape.” Trump insulted Carroll repeatedly on Truth
Social as well as on the stand during one of the trials. He insisted before the
trial that he did not know her, despite a picture showing them together, and
said she was not his “type,” but when shown the photograph in a deposition, he
mistook her for his ex-wife Marla Maples.
Trump couldn’t beat Carroll in court (though ongoing
appeals efforts mean he has not yet had to pay up), but he does have a Justice
Department that has shown a willingness to bring preposterous cases against his
political enemies, and an acting attorney general who appears determined to
prove he can succeed at political retribution where his fired predecessor did
not. (CNN reported that Todd Blanche, who holds that title, was recused from
this case because of his previous work as Trump’s personal lawyer in Carroll
litigation.)
The accusation of perjury centers on financial support
for Carroll’s legal efforts from Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and major
donor to liberal causes. In a 2022 deposition, Carroll said she did not have
any outside support for her litigation, but two weeks later, her lawyers told a
judge and Trump’s attorneys that they had secured funding from a nonprofit
Hoffman leads.
There are a couple of reasons to be skeptical of claims
of perjury here. First, Kaplan, the judge overseeing the civil cases, already
considered and dismissed concerns over the testimony. Carroll’s lawyers said
she had no communication with Hoffman or the group, but Kaplan allowed Trump’s
team to question her once more. The judge then concluded that Carroll’s
credibility was not in doubt and barred Trump’s attorneys from questioning her
about the funding during the subsequent trial.
Second, the DOJ investigation is reportedly
being overseen not by a U.S. attorney in New York, where the trial occurred,
but by Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Although this is legal, it
is unusual (or it was until this Trump administration, during which DOJ has
repeatedly assigned faraway offices to handle political cases). The track
record of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office is a red flag of its own: The
office was recently in the news when prosecutors dismissed the only remaining
misdemeanor charges against members of the “Broadview Six,” a group of people
arrested at a protest at an ICE facility last fall. They had already moved to
dismiss felony charges, which turned out to be a result of misconduct by
prosecutors.
April Perry, the federal judge presiding over the case,
said she was “incredibly
shocked” by prosecutors’ conduct during grand-jury proceedings. “I have
never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw
in those transcripts,” she said. Prosecutors personally vouched for the
credibility of evidence before a grand jury, which is impermissible. When they
failed to get an indictment, they excused grand jurors who voted against
charges and tried again. They also spoke with grand jurors outside of a
courtroom. Later, they redacted transcripts to hide it all from Perry.
Perry summoned Boutros to her courtroom, where she
scolded him. “Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself,”
she told him. “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that
most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing.
That trust has been broken.”
Any investigation into Carroll faces the same problem:
Boutros and the Trump Justice Department as a whole no longer have the benefit
of the doubt that their actions are fair and impartial, and that they aren’t
just attacking Trump’s enemies, real or perceived. Even if the probe sputters,
a spurious criminal investigation is a form of extrajudicial punishment.
Defendants must spend time and money on attorneys; the Southern Poverty Law
Center also recently found itself cut
off from financial channels because it is facing a dubious
indictment.
Trump ran for office decrying what he alleged was the
“weaponization” of the Justice Department, and he promised to reverse it. But
what was apparent then and is beyond dispute now is that Trump had no problem
with politicized justice—he just wanted it on his side. The Broadview and
Carroll cases show just how effectively he has achieved that.
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