Reid Hoffman says E. Jean Carroll probe involving his nonprofit is meant to ‘silence’ Trump critics

By Kara Scannell, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman said Friday that the Justice Department’s criminal probe involving donations he made toward E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits is meant to “silence” those who stand up to President Donald Trump.

“He is investigating me because I supported E Jean’s lawsuit –– where a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her, and a court of appeals upheld the decision,” Hoffman said of Trump in a post on X Friday. He also wrote a post on Substack addressing the Carroll probe, which he says “reaches toward” him.

“Trump thinks this fabricated investigation will do three things: silence women, concentrate his power, and try to prevent me from continuing to give financial support to his opponents (whether it be sexual assault survivors, politicians seeking office, or organizations fighting on behalf of the American People),” he wrote. “He thinks fear is contagious and courage is not. He is wrong.”

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine columnist who accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, committed perjury in connection with her two civil lawsuits against the president.

Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that the investigation also scrutinizes Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, which helped fund some of Carroll’s expenses.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago, where Hoffman’s nonprofit is based, are reviewing statements that Carroll made in a deposition about that funding and whether she provided false information, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

After CNN first reported the investigation, the US attorney said the district had not opened a criminal investigation into Carroll. Multiple sources reaffirmed to CNN Carroll is a focus of the ongoing Justice Department investigation.

The latest investigation, which is in the early stages, touches on two of the people the president most loathes — megadonor Hoffman and Carroll, the only woman to take Trump to trial over civil allegations around sexual abuse and to win in court. Trump has denied assaulting Carroll and said she wasn’t his type.

Trump has made no secret of his animosity toward them both. He has repeatedly called a Carroll a liar and a “wack job” and adamantly denied ever sexually assaulting her.

In November, as pressure was building on the Justice Department to release the records related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump said he would ask DOJ to investigate several prominent democrats who had ties to Epstein — specifically Hoffman.

Hoffman at the time called Trump’s directive “baseless.” He wrote on X, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.”

Hoffman is a major donor to Democrats and supported President Joe Biden in his re-election effort in 2024 and poured millions of dollars into political committees backing Kamala Harris’ campaign after she became the Democratic nominee.

How Hoffman found the E. Jean Carroll case

The history between Hoffman and Carroll stems from his philanthropic effort to fund a broader swath of litigation that he described in 2023 as “protecting the rule of law from the threat posed by Donald Trump’s scorched-earth legal methods.”

“Trump has had many days in court; America and its citizens should have their say as well. And so I have been proud to help level the playing field in the courts for those whom Trump and his allies have attacked and bullied,” Hoffman wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.

Hoffman said he funded a group training citizen to use Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain information from the government, and a 2017 lawsuit filed by nearly a dozen people who sued several white supremacists protesting in Charlottesville, Virginia, for emotion and physical trauma when the event turned violent.

One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in that case was Roberta Kaplan, who in 2019 ended up filing the first lawsuit on behalf of Carroll against Trump. She filed the second lawsuit in 2022 and has vigorously represented Carroll since.

Hoffman’s financial involvement was not known publicly until 2023 when Carroll’s case alleging sexual abuse and defamation was about to go to trial.

Kaplan disclosed the funding following Carroll’s deposition.

The scope of the ongoing investigation is unclear, but what is known is that it includes whether Carroll perjured herself when testifying about how her case against Trump was funded.

In the deposition, Carroll said the case was being handled on a contingency basis — which is when lawyers take a portion of the judgment — that she wasn’t sure if she was paying for expenses, and that no one else was paying her legal fees.

Six months after the deposition, Carroll’s lawyer told the judge and Trump’s attorneys that Carroll “has recollected additional information” and “she now recalls that at some point her counsel secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to offset certain expenses and legal fees,” according to court filings.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba alleged, “they conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months.” She sought to delay the trial.

In response, Hoffman said in a LinkedIn post at the time, “While Trump’s legal team has characterized my support of Carroll’s lawsuit as ‘secret,’ I want to be clear that I’ve never taken any steps to hide the financial support that I have provided to this lawsuit after it started.”

Dmitri Mehlhorn, who was then one of Hoffman’s advisors, told media outlets when they have provided third-party funding to lawsuits “we have not met the plaintiffs, we do not decide who the organization chooses to support and the clients generally do not know our identity,” according to Forbes and CNBC.

CNBC reported that Mehlhorn said in Carroll’s case, “our particular grant was made before Ms. Carroll filed suit and we had no prior knowledge that our funding would go to support her in particular.”

Mehlhorn also told Bloomberg, “We later agreed that some of that money could be allocated to Ms Carroll’s suit in September 2020.”

Mehlhorn could not be reached for comment. Hoffman did not respond to requests for comment.

A federal appeals court later found in 2024, “there was no evidence to suggest that Ms Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder, received an invoice showing the arrangement before or after her counsel received the outside funding, or had discussed the arrangement with anyone between learning of it in September 2020 and being deposed in October 2022.”

The timing of the investigation comes as the Supreme Court is set to decide whether to take up the first of Trump’s appeals involving the $5 million judgment awarded by a jury to Carroll. Trump has indicated he will also ask the nation’s highest court to hear an appeal of the $83 million judgment related to the defamation lawsuit.

Senior leaders at the Justice Department referred the investigation to the Northern District of Illinois. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, however, has been recused from the matter because he worked as one of Trump’s personal attorneys on the Carroll appeals.

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