Trump Lawyers Granted Deposition of Rape Accuser Amid Claims of Ties to Democrat Funding, Questionable Credibility

E. Jean Carroll, a writer who accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, was allowed to testify on Thursday in court in Manhattan by former President Donald Trump’s’s attorneys in response to questions about witness credibility.

Alina Habba and Joseph Tacopina, Trump’s’s lawyers, were ordered by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, to question Carroll regarding an apparent contradiction in her sworn testimony in pre-trial subpoenas regarding how she funded her slander complaint against Trump.

It came after Trump’s’s lawyers discovered years ago that Reid Hoffman, a prominent Democrat donor and LinkedIn Founder, is funding at least some of her legal charges, in contrast to Carroll, who testified under oath in an Oct. 14, 2022, testimony that no one else is paying her charges.

According to Carroll’s’s deposit evidence, this apparent inconsistency” may prove related to the dilemma of plaintiffs’ credibility ,” the prosecutor wrote in his Thursday order.

When Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the middle of the 1990s, the lawsuit was filed in 2019.

Carroll filed a defamation complaint against the then-president in 2019 after the latter refuted her claims. The case was heard by state, federal, and administrative judges in New York and Washington, D.C.

Trump has refuted each and every one of Carroll’s’s claims.

Trump’s’s attorneys now have a chance to get potential evidence to support their claim that Carroll is unreliable before the new test, which is scheduled for April 25.

Unreliable Statements

Carroll testified under oath on October 14, 2022, that no one else was paying her legal fees and that they were paid on eventuality, meaning that the pay would depend on the outcome of the case.

Carroll, however,” now recalls that at some point her counsel secured extra cash from a nonprofit organization to offset certain expenses and legal fees ,” according to an April 10 email from Carroll to Trump’s’s counsel.

Roberta Kaplan, the attorney for Carroll, responded to Trump’s’s letter on April 13 by stating that” a nonprofit was responsible for providing this funding to help pay certain costs and fees in connection with the business’ work on behalf of Carroll.”

According to the two parties’ April 13 filings, the aforementioned non-profit was the Democratic-affiliated 501( c )( 4 ) nonprofit American Future Republic.

According to Trump’s’s attorneys, Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn, is the” primary angel” of this organization. Hoffman was mentioned in Carroll’s’s comment text on April 13 and his attorneys did not refute this assertion.

Hoffman is referred to as the” primary funder” of the American Future Republic and as” left-of-center” on the Capital Research Center’s’s policy influence watchdog website, Influence Watch. According to the site, the nonprofit generated more than$ 21.9 million in revenue in 2019.

Given that Hoffman is explicitly anti-Trump and may have funded Carroll’s’s formal fees” for the purpose of pushing a political plan,” the attorneys for Trump claim in their letter dated April 13 that the discrepancy between Carroll and his statements affects the validity of the case.

They continued,”[ Carroll’s’s ] potential political ties are relevant to her motivation for filing her lawsuits, her potential bias against Defendant, and her credibility as a witness.”

In their issuing on April 13 in response to this assertion, Kaplan downplayed the cash and stated that his company, Kaiplan, Hecker & Fink,