Of Course Trump Is Going After E. Jean Carroll
Of Course Trump Is Going After E. Jean Carroll
PUBLISHED 6/5/2026 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
And it’s just more proof that this administration is dangerous to women.
E. Jean Carroll wrote a book in 2025 called Not My Type about her legal battle with Donald Trump, framed as a memoir/reportage of the trials and the public fight that followed. The title is a reference to Trump’s remark that Carroll was “not my type,” which Carroll turns into a central part of the book’s argument and tone. (Jenny Warburg)
Originally published by The Contrarian.
Last week, multiple outlets reported 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. The DOJ’s latest claim is spurious: that Carroll committed perjury during a deposition in how she answered questions about her lawyers’ fees. (In particular, the DOJ is hyper-focused on payments made by Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit, 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.
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Ask E. Jean director Ivy Meeropol and E. Jean Carroll at the Montclair Film Festival in 2025. (Neil Grabowsky / Montclair Film via Wikimedia Commons)
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. 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 the 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.
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Robbie Kaplan and Carroll. (Jenny Warburg)
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I’ve been fascinated to see certain loyalists, Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), among them, claim the mantle of #MeToo, argue that survivors come first and even pressure for resignations from Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) 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. This isn’t just dangerous for women. It strikes at the very heart of a functioning democracy.
https://msmagazine.com/2026/06/05/trump-department-justice-e-jean-carroll/