According to a report published on Thursday, the enigmatic figure behind the sexual assault lawsuit filed against former President Donald Trump has been identified.
The Daily Beast reported that, according to court documents filed on Thursday, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and now a significant Democratic Party donor, has been secretly funding E. Jean Carroll’s rape case.
The most recent revelations were made during a heated correspondence between the attorneys for Carroll and Trump, who are presently debating whether or not to postpone the two-week trial.
It is uncertain whether Hoffman’s financial support will affect the outcome of the case, but the disclosure of the previously undisclosed funding is likely to bolster Trump’s claims that affluent Democrats are working behind the scenes to undermine him, according to the outlet.
Hoffman, a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founded the professional social network LinkedIn. In addition to being a prominent Democratic donor, he has made it his mission to weaken Trump’s grasp on the Republican Party. According to Vox, Hoffman’s opposition to Trump’s policies has strained his friendship with fellow Silicon Valley figure Peter Thiel, who has funded conservative causes and candidates.
In the 1990s, Carroll, a veteran magazine columnist, claims Trump assaulted her in the dressing room of an upscale Manhattan department store. She detailed her experience in a tell-all memoir, which prompted Trump to label her a fraud from the White House, according to The Daily Beast. Nearly four years have passed since Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against him.
Wow. Reid Hoffman, funder of various Democratic disinfo operations https://t.co/a8Cuc8qsd4
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 13, 2023
With the passage of a new rape survivor law in New York, which extended the statute of limitations on private civil lawsuits, Carroll has filed a new lawsuit seeking a trial that could award her monetary compensation and, more importantly, label the powerful real estate magnate running for a second presidential term as a rapist.
“Trump lawyers Alina Habba and Joe Tacopina—who have already tried to delay the trial—are seizing on the strange nature of this 11th hour revelation to ask a federal judge to push back the trial or even open up another round of investigation before it starts,” the outlet reported.
Trump’s legal team documented in a letter dated Thursday that Carroll stated during her deposition on October 14 that she was not receiving financial support from anyone else, only for Carroll’s attorneys to notify them on Monday that she had a mysterious backer.
The Daily Beast reported that Trump’s attorneys claimed Carroll’s team was reluctant to disclose the identity of the donor until several phone calls later in the week, when they disclosed that Hoffman and the American Future Republic were the donors.
“The proposition that [Carroll] has suddenly ‘recollected’ the source of her funding for this high-profile litigation—which has spanned four years, spawned two separate actions, and been before numerous state, federal, and appellate courts—is not only preposterous, it is demonstrably false. Indeed, it simply defies logic to believe that [Carroll’s] attorneys—four of whom were present at her deposition—were unaware that their own firm had ‘secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization’ to bankroll their client’s various lawsuits and ensure their bills were being paid,” Trump’s attorneys noted on Thursday.
In a filing to the federal judge overseeing the case, Habba and Tacopina also stated that Carroll “apparently perjured herself during her deposition; her counsel sat by and allowed her to do so, fully aware that her testimony was false; and then they conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months, only to reveal it on the eve of trial.”
More on this story via Conservative Brief:
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, responded immediately, The Daily Beast noted. CONTINUE READING…
