Billionaire Democratic donor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman vowed he won’t “bend the knee” to President Trump after the Justice Department launched an investigation into his nonprofit’s funding of a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit against the president.
Mr. Hoffman’s American Future Republic provided $7 million to a law firm that later represented E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault and defamation lawsuits against President Trump.
“Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll, defaming her, and now he’s going after her again,” Mr. Hoffman said in a social media post. “Trump cannot be allowed to use the full weight and power of the US Government to come after women who speak up, or anyone who supports them in doing so.”
Mr. Hoffman said the president should focus on lowering gas prices.
“Trump hopes that these fraudulent investigations will silence those who stand up to him. He is wrong. I will not bend the knee,” Mr. Hoffman said.
The Justice Department is probing Mr. Hoffman’s nonprofit and Ms. Carroll’s initial denial under oath that her case was funded by the left-wing billionaire.
In 2023 and 2024, Manhattan juries awarded Ms. Carroll more than $88 million for defamation and sexual abuse in two civil lawsuits. Critic said her case was full of holes and amounted to political lawfare waged against Mr. Trump to stop him from winning a second White House term.
A source familiar with the probe said Ms. Carroll is not the subject of the investigation, at least for now.
Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois, the source said, are conducting an investigation “related to her deposition and perjury,” about outside funding of her case. The federal probe is more closely focused on American Future Republic, which in 2020 paid Ms. Carroll’s law firm $7 million. Some or all of that money was later redirected to Ms. Carroll’s sexual assault and defamation lawsuit, with Mr. Hoffman’s approval.
Mr. Hoffman, who over the past decade has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to stop Mr. Trump from winning office, said in a 2023 Washington Post video that he was “happy” to have covered Ms. Carroll’s legal fees.
“I thought it was a good thing for society, not just her,” he said, explaining his decision to pay for her case.
He said he was not surprised by the guilty verdict, which he said, “is a good showing about who Trump really is as a person and what kind of things he’s done.”
Ms. Carroll said she “completely forgot” about Mr. Hoffman’s money when asked under oath during an October 2022 deposition whether anyone else was paying her legal fees.
Her lawyers informed Mr. Trump’s legal team in April of 2023 that Ms. Carroll “now recalls that at some point her counsel secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to offset certain expenses and legal fees.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan that the revelation raised “concerns as to Plaintiff’s bias and motive” for the lawsuit, but Judge Kaplan let the trial proceed and ruled her revelation did not affect the case.
No laws prohibit legal donations like the one provided by Mr. Hoffman. But lying under oath in a court case can result in a federal perjury conviction that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.
The Justice Department has not provided details of its investigation into Mr. Hoffman’s legal aid.
Mr. Hoffman said Mr. Trump’s “newest accusation of me is absurdly false.” He said the premise of the investigation “would be laughable if the subject matter weren’t so serious.”
Mr. Trump said he has never met Ms. Carroll. During the trial, she could not specify exactly when Mr. Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. She thought it was 1995 or 1996. There were no witnesses, video footage or physical evidence that placed Mr. Trump at the scene.
President Trump said Ms. Carroll made up the assault to sell her 2019 memoir. He’s asked the Supreme Court to overturn the $83.3 million defamation verdict under a law that prevents government employees from being sued while doing their jobs. The defamation lawsuit was initially filed in 2019, while he was president.
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