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TRUMP'S POLITICAL AND PERSONAL ANTAGONISTS ENSNAIRES ANOTHER HIGH PROFILE TARGET. E-Jean Carroll, THE FORMER COLUMNIST WHO SUCCESSFULLY SUED TRUMP TWICE FOR SEXUAL ABUSE AND DEFAMATION, IS NOW UNDER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION BY THE DOJ. A SOURCE FAMILIAR WITH THE MATTER CONFIRMS TO MS NOW THAT THE PROBE IS FOCUSED ON WHETHER CAROL LIED UNDER OATH ABOUT FUNDING FOR HER TWO LAWSUITS. A CIVIL JURY AWARDED CAROL MILLION DOLLARS IN 2023, FINDING THAT TRUMP SEXUALLY abused and defamed her. Then she won a second $83 million civil judgment the following year after Trump defamed her again.
Trump testified in his own defense at that second trial, and he is currently appealing both verdicts. Let's bring in MSNOW justice and intelligence reporter Ken Delanian, our senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin, and MSNOW legal analyst, former federal prosecutor Christy Greenberg. Ken, first, what do we know about this investigation? How far along is it? What are the allegations? Do we know of any evidence, et cetera? All good questions, Anna. And frankly, we know very little about this investigation other than the fact that it is an open criminal investigation being run out of the U.S. attorney's office in the northern district
of Illinois, and that it does center around this question of whether E.G. Carroll lied under oath regarding private funding of her lawsuit. There was a whole dispute about that. Trump's lawyers argued that this lawsuit was being funded privately, and the question of whether it was actually and whether Jean Carroll knew about IT IS AN OPEN QUESTION, BUT THAT APPEARS TO BE THE LINE OF INQUIRY HERE, ACCORDING TO MY SOURCES. AND LOOK, FRANKLY, WE HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THIS IS THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF DONALD TRUMP'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S RETRIBUTION CAMPAIGN, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS THAT SEEM TO BE VERY MARGINAL, VERY NARROW,
AIMED AT ESSENTIALLY HIS political enemies and personal enemies. And it can't be a coincidence that all of these people who are on the wrong side of Donald Trump are finding themselves under criminal investigation. We've never seen this before in the history of the Justice Department, and it's got a lot of people inside the DOJ very, very concerned, Donna. And again, Christy, Donald Trump, he lost these two lawsuits. He's appealed. Appeals court has rejected him already, and he's continuing to appeal. What's your reaction. Does a normal independent DOJ not tasked with taking on Trump's perceived enemies take up this case, an investigation into E Jean Carroll?
Of course not. Prosecutors are going to have a really hard time here. I mean, it there is not a perjury case from what I can see making a perjury case as a prosecutor. You don't just have to show there's a false statement. You have to show that the person knowingly made a false statement with the intent to deceive not that it was a mistake or the person was confused and most importantly the false statement has to be material meaning it had to have the ability to change the outcome of the proceeding and this statement that's at issue, the statement at issue is E.J.
Carroll saying in a deposition in 2022 that no one else was paying her legal fees. That statement is not material to the proceedings in that case. And the reason we know it wasn't material is because the judge was informed about it. E.G. Carroll's lawyer said to the judge, hey, we learned two weeks after her deposition that there was they secured FUNDING FROM AN OUTSIDE SOURCE, AND THEY INFORMED THE JUDGE ABOUT IT, AND THE JUDGE ALLOWED TRUMP'S LAWYERS TO QUESTION E.G. CAROL AGAIN IN ANOTHER DEPOSITION. AND THEN WHEN THE TRIAL BEGAN, THE JUDGE said, you know what? I don't see any issue with E. Jean Carroll's credibility. And he actually blocked Trump's lawyers from asking her about this outside funding.
The judges already determined this wasn't material. So the idea that prosecutors would now think this was material enough to bring to a grand jury is absolutely absurd. It should be dead on arrival. This is not a legitimate perjury case. So, Lisa, both CNN and the New York Times are reporting that Todd Blanche, the acting AG, has now recused himself or has recused himself from this particular case and investigation because of his prior role as Trump's personal attorney, apparently worked on one of the Carroll appeals without Blanche, who's driving this?
Well, supposedly there will be either the person who is acting as the deputy attorney general right now, or maybe someone in their office sort of driving the bus from Maine Justice. But as Ken referred to earlier, this investigation is being run from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois. And as far as I can see, that's not because there is a conflict in the SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, THAT IS THE PLACE WHERE Todd Blanche also obviously practiced. That is the district in which both Carroll trials were held. But as far as I can see, there's no conflict there. What's probably going on is that the acting THE FACT THAT WE HAVE BEEN DEPUTIZED ANDER BOUTROS, THE U.S.
ATTORNEY FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS AS A SPECIAL U.S. ATTORNEY WITH POWERS TO RUN THIS PARTICULAR INVESTIGATION. THAT IS A STATUTORY TOOL AVAILABLE TO ATTORNEYS GENERAL, BUT THIS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN USING IT A LOT TO SORT OF DESIGNATE X-U.S. ATTORNEY OR Y-U.S. ATTORNEY TO RUN AN INVESTIGATION THAT ORDINARILY WOULD NOT BE WITHIN THEIR GEOGRAPHIC wheelhouse. So what do we know about this attorney, this U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros? Well, we increasingly know more and more, and that's because the Broadview 6 case that some of us talked about last week, that was a case that the Northern District of Illinois brought against six people who were protesting outside an ICE detention facility.
It was dropped last week by Andrew Boutros after the revelation of a number of grand jury preceding irregularities. He then HAD TO APPEAR BEFORE A DISTRICT COURT JUDGE APRIL PERRY LAST WEEK IN CHICAGO WHERE HE WAS DRESSED DOWN NOT ONLY FOR THE IMPROPRIETIES THAT HIS OFFICE AND PROSECUTORS UNDER HIS SUPERVISION COMMITTED BUT BECAUSE HE ESSENTIALLY SAID THAT THE case was still a just one despite the fact that he was dropping the prosecution. Andrew Boutros is perhaps one of the most high-profile U.S. attorneys in the country right now, and not high-profile, Ana, necessarily for the best of reasons.
It's interesting that this is the place where this case has ended up. Ken, with Trump so entrenched in this DOJ, is it surprising Blanche may have recused himself? IN PART BECAUSE WE KNOW FROM SOME REPORTING THAT A CAREER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAWYER AT ONE POINT ADVISED TO BLANCH THAT HE SHOULD RECUSE HIMSELF FROM ALL MATTERS PERTAINING TO DONALD TRUMP SINCE HE REPRESENTED HIM AS HIS defense counsel. And of course, Blanche has not done that. But in this particular case, because he worked on this exact case, perhaps he felt that he had an obligation to recuse. But make no mistake, Todd Blanche has allies installed and entrenched all over the senior ranks of the Justice Department.
They don't need to talk to Todd Blanche to know what Todd Blanche wants done in this or any other case, and all of them know what Donald Trump and what the White House wants done. That's the way this Justice Department is running. Again, unlike any Justice Department in modern history, it's being run as an arm of the White House and essentially the personal law firm of Donald Trump in many ways. And so whether Todd Blanche refuses himself or not, it isn't going to change that on it. CHRISTIE, as Lisa mentioned, this Broadview 6 case fell apart. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, who's now apparently taking on this case, dismissed the charges over improper grand jury procedures in that Broadview 6 case.
Judges, of course, tossed the first James Comey case, the Letitia James case, the Jerome Powell subpoena. So several of these politically charged investigations brought by the Trump DOJ have collapsed. How do you see this one progressing? I don't. I mean, first, I wonder if this individual who is based in Chicago is looking to actually charge a case before grand jury in Chicago. The venue for that would be tenuous at best. I mean, there is an allegation again that a nonprofit based in Chicago may have been providing some legal fees.
I suppose in some way that could be strained to show that the statement itself was false, but that's really not a good hook for venue. The justice manual always says that the district where a false oath was made, which here would have been the Southern District of New York is where a case would be brought. Uh, so if this individual who's outside the Southern District of New York, if he's actually going to attempt to bring a case within the Southern District of New York, um, good luck.
It's it's, uh, I mean, I was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. The judges know the prosecutors. Um, it's a very, you know, tight community of people who know one another and know how the courts work, how the, what the judges are, their reputations, the rules for how to present cases before a grand jury, which apparently, uh, prosecutors in Chicago are not following. Um, and so I don't see, again, this individual being able to proceed in Chicago because of a venue issue and then trying to have an outsider come into the Southern District of New York and try and present a case there.
I, I don't see that working out very well for him. I also wonder, Christy, of all those other cases I just mentioned that have fallen apart, that have gone after perceived enemies of the president. If those could be tied into a defense for E. Jean Carroll to show a pattern? Well, I think she could do that. But I think her best bet is really to focus on her own case. I mean, this is an individual who has been found liable for defaming YOU KNOW, NOT ONCE BUT TWICE. AND SO TO THE TUNE OF MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR, YOU KNOW, JUDGMENTS FROM JURYS IN THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK. SO AGAIN, YOU KNOW, a lot of the other cases,
yes, we can see the retribution being plain. But until that's proven in court, I think her best bet is to focus on her own claims where there have been judgments delivered by juries saying that, you know, that this president and when he was both when he was president, when he was not president had defamed her personally. And I think that is a really important thing to focus on when she looked, when her lawyers look at the case and why it was brought. I mean, the motive against her in particular, the retribution against her in particular seems quite obvious. Lisa, what exactly is the status of these Trump appeals of the original civil cases involving E. Jean Carroll?
Has she seen a cent of the money Trump owes her? She hasn't seen a cent of the money that Trump owes her, but on an interest is building on those amounts as these appeals continue. In fact, E. Jean Carroll recently consented to not being paid on a recent appellate decision. After that decision came down, she could have been paid and she decided with President Trump that she would agree to stay that so long as interest continue to accrue. To answer your first question, the first of the Carroll cases tried has been fully briefed at the Supreme Court, has been waiting for a decision by the Supreme Court as to whether they'll hear the case.
It's been scheduled and rescheduled for consideration by the justices at their conference 12 times now, and it comes up. The most recent time it will come up is indeed this morning after they release decisions. The other case was recently rejected. by the full panel of the Second Circuit on a petition by Donald Trump to have the entire active bench in the Second Circuit rehear it after a three-judge panel affirmed the second trial's decision. Theoretically, he's going to try to go to the Supreme Court with that too. And indeed, we should expect that he'll file a cert
petition in the next several weeks or months. So many moving parts in the legal sphere right now, Christy. Because of this new probe, could Carol apply for money from this new nearly $1.8 billion DOJ settlement fund? I mean, I don't see why not. The idea is that anybody who has suffered from lawfare or weaponization, which you're not, you know, very clearly defined in the settlement. Anybody who has suffered from those can make a claim. And certainly she is among them again. And she has the judgments, two judgments saying that Donald Trump defamed her to prove it. So now that they are going after a person who has been
proven to be defamed, that would SEEM TO BE VERY CLEAR WEAPONIZATION, AND SHE WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE A CLAIM TO MAKE. OF COURSE, THAT CLAIM IS GOING NOWHERE. WE DON'T KNOW THE COMMISSION THAT WILL BE DECIDING THESE, BUT THE COMMISSION WILL BE DETERMINED BY TODD Blanche. And certainly anybody that would be sympathetic at all to E. Jean Carroll's claim is not going to be on that commission. So she won't see a penny from that commission, but she should certainly make the claim nonetheless to just be able to say, to be able to prove just what a sham this commission and this whole slush fund for his allies and, frankly,
January 6th rioters and criminals. Just what a sham it is.
