CNN reports that the Department of Justice is investigating Jean Carroll, who famously sued President Trump for sexual assault 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 did indeed commit perjury. I don’t know anything about the financing of her lawsuit, but she claimed that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York, while shoppers passed by just a few feet away. That claim was ridiculous on its face, and the jury rejected it. Since Carroll could hardly have been innocently mistaken in claiming that she was raped, I take it as established that she committed perjury.
But so what? This investigation is going nowhere. Carroll won’t be charged, and if she is charged, it will be a mistake. The Department of Justice does not go around, randomly charging parties in civil cases with perjury, years after the fact. DOJ’s interest in this case obviously arises from the fact that Trump was the defendant, and the case (or even, as here, the alleged consideration of such a case) will inevitably and correctly be chalked up as another instance of Trump seeking vengeance against his personal enemies. This is not what voters want the President, or the Department of Justice, to focus on.
As President, Trump does some great things and many good things. But he shoots himself in the foot almost on a daily basis, giving his enemies ammunition to fill the headlines, day after day, with Trump’s self-inflicted wounds. By rights, Trump should go down in history as one of our most successful presidents. But due to his own frequent lack of discipline and loss of focus, that is not how he will be remembered.
