The Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider its decision not to rehear President Trump’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, reopening a legal battle that has drawn scrutiny over funding sources and evidence admissibility.
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The justices redistributed Trump’s petition for a rehearing, marking the first such action since 2018. The move comes as the Department of Justice investigates whether Carroll may have committed perjury when she testified under oath about who funded her legal representation.
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The Funding Question
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Carroll’s lawsuit was partially funded by Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and prominent Democratic donor, through a nonprofit organization called American Future Republic that directed roughly $7 million to her legal team. The funding arrangement was not disclosed until weeks before the initial trial.
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In a 2022 deposition, Carroll testified that no other parties were financing her legal fees. A federal appeals court later ruled she had \”plausibly forgotten\” about Hoffman’s financial support, a characterization that has drawn significant criticism.
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The Evidence at Trial
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Carroll alleged that Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1995 or 1996. No police report was filed, no contemporaneous complaint exists beyond two friends she claimed to have told, and the retailer confirmed it retains no security footage from that era.
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The case relied on New York’s Adult Survivors Act, passed in 2022 and applied retroactively, which created a one-year window allowing the lawsuit to proceed. The only photographic evidence of the two together showed them in a receiving line at a 1987 NBC charity event lasting several minutes, according to Carroll’s testimony.
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A jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll tens of millions in damages. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.
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The Core Legal Issue
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Trump’s Supreme Court petition challenges whether the jury should have heard testimony from other accusers making decades-old allegations and the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, both admitted as \”pattern evidence.\” Carroll’s own legal team conceded the case might have looked different without that evidence.
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The central question before the Court concerns whether evidence of unrelated allegations should be permitted to prove a specific claim. Trump’s legal argument rests on established evidentiary rules designed to ensure liability stems from proven conduct rather than character assessments.
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What Happens Next
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The perjury investigation by federal prosecutors operates parallel to the Court’s review. Legal experts anticipate the justices will examine whether the evidentiary standards applied in the trial align with established precedent across similar cases.
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This story has been updated. CNN’s legal affairs team contributed to this report.
