NYT: DOJ Probes Victorious Trump Accuser E. Jean Carroll

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1:14This is very much a story about what a loser does. I don't mean that in the pejorative sense of the insult term. I mean, in court, there are winners and losers. In fact, it's an area where Donald Trump and his administration lately have had trouble precisely because you can't just lie your way out of it. You can delay sometimes, but eventually you get to the point that there's a winner and a loser. And Donald Trump was the loser of a very serious case, civil, not criminal, about his past alleged conduct. And our top story tonight is about how he years later continues to respond to being the loser in court in that case.

1:48So this is important, and in some ways it's disturbing because it involves using, and, according to many critics and legal observers, abusing the levers of power. But I don't want you, before I get into it, to lose sight of the fact that the system was working, that he was losing, and that a lot of the evidence we have tonight suggests he will be losing again. That is the context for a revenge campaign going to a new low, even according to many people who might sympathize with parts of Donald Trump's agenda. Because his DOJ, now led by an acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who is embattled in all sorts of scandals and credibility crises, and we'll get to that, has reportedly opened a criminal investigation that relates to E.

2:32Jean Carroll, who was the winner of a very prominent case where Donald Trump was the loser in civil court. Carroll had accused Trump of sexual abuse. And in a case that had many twists and turns, she was the winner. Now we are learning at this late hour that the DOJ has done something that didn't do at the time and it didn't do right after, which I mentioned because it adds the suspicion that this is not on the level, that this is yet another baseless revenge prosecution, but they are probing a group that helped fund Carroll's legal bills. It included people like Reid Hoffman, who's a tech billionaire associated with Democrats, who's criticized Donald Trump, and the Post reporting and MS now also matching the reporting that the investigation looks at whether the money trail somehow opens them up for an investigation.

3:24And then it will also try to drag in statements that Carol made during a related deposition and that they view that as perhaps a way to cook up something that Carol has never been credibly accused of before. And remember, there's been other investigations, other government oversight. Obviously, a person could win a case against Trump but have other legal liabilities But in her long and storied life and career, that might have come out by now. But instead, we're learning that this is the new chance by this DOJ to try to see if they can allegedly cook up some sort of perjury trap or probe or backward looking effort against Carroll herself.

4:00If that sounds familiar, they tried and failed. They lost an effort to do that to James Comey. The Times reports the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation to E. Jean Carroll, citing two sources. Now, that, of course, as I'm emphasizing, is different than the other report I just put on the screen, because one involves that money trail or perjury. This would involve just an open criminal probe into her. The Times notes the DOJ would also look at perjury in this open criminal probe. Now, some of this is familiar because Trump's lawyers had previously made this kind of objection. And I want to be clear, in a civil case, of course, there's debates over accuracy.

4:39Trump's lawyers in a civil context had every right to raise it. Indeed, it's already been discussed in that case. They said that it was basically misleading if she was concealing Hoffman's financial support, the billionaire I mentioned. Now, that's important because the issue was litigated in court and an appeals court reviewed that and found, quote, no evidence to suggest Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding. And thus, the court in 24 said we perceive no abuse of discretion here. So this has been exhaustively reviewed by independent federal courts. That cuts against the effort by DOJ to now say they found some new crime potentially.

5:18A New York jury in 2023 found Trump liable for a lot of money. As you see, he was initially ordered to pay five and then more than five million, tens of millions of dollars in this case. that second higher number related to alleged defamation. And again, she won, Trump lost. He was the loser of that case. So that is the baseline here. Donald Trump is not immune from being held accountable in civil court. And even though as president, the Supreme Court has fortified his protections with a kind of legal shield that no other president had received, and that's been well debated, when I mentioned that the process has worked up to this point, while Trump has not paid Carroll, and that is a tactic he has used repeatedly and taken it all the way to the Supreme Court, he was held publicly accountable to a degree that obviously bothered him when you look at his responses.

6:17Now, this is part of, as I've told you, a wider set of facts that can only be understood in totality. Donald Trump's DOJ pursuing losing baseless retribution cases. They have targeted very clearly anyone who disagrees with Trump. And so we're updating this chart as we go. You can see on the left many of these cases that they tried to pursue couldn't even get through the grand jury stage. The no charges stamp you see on the left, others dismissed or dropped. And then other cases, as you see on the right, are grinding on. Tonight, we have this report that perhaps they're looking into the money trail or the organization linked to Carol.

6:56She has, unlike the people on your screen, not, of course, been indicted or anything yet. MSNOW also asked E. Jean Carroll and her attorney for any reaction. At this hour, they're not commenting, which is understandable. This is all new information. And the Post reported that a representative for the billionaire I mentioned, Reid Hoffman, and the DOJ are not commenting tonight either. You take this together and you look at the wider pattern, and it tells you two things at once. that on the one hand, the system has continued to work. That's why Trump was the loser of that case. That's why he obviously maintains anger about losing in public on this.

7:32And that the efforts to abuse government power to go after these people, while costly, possibly unconstitutional, and maybe there'll be later sanctions for it, those efforts are not working. In other words, that part of the guardrail is holding. I'm not reporting to you that, you know, there's 20 plus retribution cases and they're five and 15 or two and 17 or whatever. No, it's zero and 20 plus. They have not won a single case yet. That's just the facts. Does that mean this is okay and all good? No. We are witnessing a rolling retribution campaign funded by your tax dollars, distracting from other more reputable cases and crime fighting to go after anyone who has dared publicly held Donald Trump accountable.

8:16And if they turned him into the loser in court, well, apparently all the worse for them because they now have to costly wage this battle over time against this reckless runaway DOJ. Okay, that's the baseline facts. I want to bring in guests we booked explicitly for this news, which of course is brand new. Former White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who served in the first Trump administration, was aligned with some of those policy views, but broke over exactly the type of lawlessness that we're reporting tonight. And Nancy Erica Smith, a renowned civil rights attorney who's represented victims of sexual harassment.

8:50Nancy, I'm very curious to hear your view. I emphasize the facts here for viewers that this is not a story of everything gone wrong. I think it's a mixed bag for the reasons I mentioned, even though right now we're seeing what looks like the most powerful person in the country getting his DOJ to at least intimidate or go after and possibly worse someone who was vindicated in the civil courts. Can you speak to us on both sides of this, why it's not worthless for someone like Ms. Carol to exercise her rights? And then what else is happening? Well, vindictive prosecutions are very scary for all of us.

9:30If the DOJ, which is supposed to work for citizens, actually is Donald Trump's arm of retribution, that's scary for all of us. because even though he hasn't been succeeding to date, dragging people like Comey through multiple indictments, this costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself against the DOJ. The DOJ still has unbelievable resources, even though apparently they're a bunch of clowns running it right now. I mean, they're repeatedly chastised by the courts, which is the good you want to also focus on that the guardrails currently are still standing. it's very scary to have a DOJ.

10:11Look at what just happened to Kilmora Brigo Garcia. The court found that that was a prosecution that was deliberately vindictive. And that's not a powerful person. That's not Comey or Jerome Powell or John Brennan or Letitia James. I mean, if the DOJ can target whoever Trump wants and blanch his former private lawyer who defended him against E. Jean Carroll, is going to use the DOJ in this way. And it's interesting. I read recently that there was a study by German politicians about how the Nazis were able to use mid-level sort of losers, people who were not good at what they were doing, not the experts.

10:59And we have seen this right now in our whole government and specifically in the DOJ. We have Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer. After an unethical U.S. attorney refused, she went to court and got an indictment, violated all kinds of rules, misrepresented the law, thrown out. Now we have Andrew Boutrous, who apparently in Illinois is running this investigation. He removed grand jurors who voted against a prior indictment against Democratic protesters. and he coached grand jurors and then he redacted the transcripts. And the federal judge said in that case, I thought the redactions were bad, but when I read the whole transcript, I've seen thousands of transcripts.

11:46I've never seen this kind of prosecutorial behavior. In New Jersey, Alina Haba was thrown out by the courts. She threatened to turn jersey red and indicted both a sitting congresswoman and the mayor of Newark, which was thrown out against the mayor of Newark. She has ethics charges pending against her. Todd Blanche has ethics charges pending. This is scary. It's holding so far. But these people are suffering. But it was I mean, James. But Carol was right. She was right to step up. There were there were threats back then. You still think she did the right thing? Oh, my. E. Jean Carroll is my hero.

12:25She's so much braver than so many powerful people right now in this country. She did the right thing. We all have to do the right thing. We have no choice or else we're just going to be living under fascism. Yeah, you put it clearly. Sarah, I want to play a little bit of Carol. Nancy mentions this. And as always, I mean, we report on evidence. So if there were some newly revealed smoking gun evidence against her, we would report on that. Sometimes there's complex stories. I emphasize that's not the case. This has been litigated. It's been reviewed. They haven't come up with anything on her. And she's lived a long life in the public eye as well because she was a writer.

13:04So it's very incumbent on the government to come forward with any hard evidence if they have it. They have not done so. And against that background, as you and some of your former colleagues who spoke out, Sarah, have faced these withering attacks, legal, sometimes security issues. Here's a little bit of what we heard from Carol over the years. To me, this is not about politics. This is about a big win for all women. Yesterday was the happiest day of my life. The former president had smeared me so badly and so feebly and with such malice and such spite. We did what people thought was impossible.

13:52We beat Donald Trump. Sarah? Yeah, I have to commend E. Jean Carroll for her bravery in coming forward, because I know as well as anyone that when you speak out against Donald Trump, you put a target on your back. But the target that she created for herself is obviously so, so, so large. And just to think that now, after everything she's gone through, This is a woman who is a victim of Donald Trump. A jury found him liable of sexually abusing her. And now she has to be re-victimized all over again after he already has defamed her. And it goes without saying that he has not paid her the over$80 million that he owes her.

14:35And now he's using the DOJ to go after her. Something he accused the Biden administration of doing. He loved to rant on about how they weaponized the DOJ. No, that is exactly what Trump is doing. He is projecting when he makes claims like that, because this is now, I believe if you look at all the investigations, there have been plenty of them that looked into Donald Trump. He has now targeted someone in every single investigation with this new edition that the New York Times is saying of E. Jean Carroll. And so just it's something that me and plenty of the other Trump critics who worked for and the first admin and then turned and were vocally against him in the lead up to the 2024 election, warned that a second Trump administration was going to be about.

15:21We knew it wasn't going to be him being focused on the priorities of the American people. Look, the American people don't care about relitigating E. Jean Carroll. They care about their gas prices, their grocery prices, getting us out of this war with Iran, inflation. And this is what Trump is focused on. He's focused on going after his perceived enemies and his vanity projects like the ballroom, like the UFC fight on the White House lawn. He doesn't care about you. He only cares about getting revenge and building up his own legacy. Yeah. I mean, you put it starkly and one of your former colleagues, Ms.

15:55Griffin, in the White House, who's now, like many people, speaking out using her First Amendment rights during this perilous time. She spoke on this today as well. What I want to do is our guests stay, but it was pretty powerful along with Sonny Hauston, the lawyer on The View. We're going to hear that and hear more from our guests when we're back in 90 seconds. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choicehotels.com. Sunday, June 14th from Washington, D.C., A special live taping of MS Now's hit podcast, The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.

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17:04We're back with our guest, Trump White House veteran turned critic Sarah Matthews, lawyer Nancy Erica Smith, covering something that by any modern standards is highly suspicious, a likely scandal at DOJ. Based on the evidence, what looks like a baseless effort to intimidate someone who already won in court with serious allegations against the current president, Donald Trump. And I want to play some interesting remarks from Sonny Haasen, a known lawyer on The View, and Ms. Griffin, who's, I should mention, a former colleague of Sarah Matthews, our guest from the Trump White House, someone who also spoke out, especially after Jan 6.

17:39Let's take a look. I will never understand why this administration wants to put some of the worst associations of the presidents back in the headlines. Most of us have kind of forgotten about the E. Jean Carroll suit, the allegations, what he was ultimately found liable for. And now it puts it front and center. The Justice Department that I work for just doesn't exist anymore. It's now like a third rate, fourth rate type of law firm for Donald Trump. So from purely a standpoint of wanting to focus on his domestic agenda and move forward, this makes zero sense. So prosecutors would just never take cases like this.

18:13So many career prosecutors have left precisely because they wouldn't take cases like this. Sarah? Yeah, I agree with Sonny and my former colleague, Alyssa, that this is just bad optics. It doesn't make much sense why he wants to put these stories back in the headlines. And also I'll point out, too, that while he's going after these perceived enemies, someone like E. Jean Carroll, who was proven, you know, to be a victim of his in court, instead of actually going after real criminals, you know what the Trump administration is doing? They're creating a$1.8 billion slush fund of your taxpayer dollars to pay them out, including some of the January 6th insurrectionists.

18:54Tom Blanche, the acting attorney general, has not ruled out awarding those folks some of your taxpayer dollars. And so it's really concerning to me that it seems like their priorities are just totally out of whack when they're not really the party of the rule of law. They don't want to go after real criminals. They actually want to reward them and give them taxpayer money. And it makes me frustrated because we saw that this was completely predictable, that Trump was solely focused on retribution and revenge in the lead up to 2024, and that this is not the presidency that he promised. He said that he was going to bring down prices.

19:28He said that he wouldn't get us in another endless war. And instead, he's gone back on all of those things. And I just think that hopefully more Republicans will speak out against stuff like this. We haven't really seen them speak out when it comes to the targeting of individuals such as James Comey or Letitia James or E. Jean Carroll. We have seen some Republicans show that they have a backbone and they're calling out the$1.8 billion slush fund. And so hopefully some of those folks stay strong and fight back on that. But I would be more encouraged if they would speak out against this kind of targeting of these supposed enemies of the president.

20:08And instead, they just choose to stay silent. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. And again, you've been inside it. You were in that Trump White House during those periods. Nancy, the Times notes that Blanche, who has the kind of conflict that would have disqualified him from this job in most administrations of either party. Blanche, the acting attorney general, the Times writes, is said to have recused himself from the probe because of his prior representation of Mr. Trump. Break that down for us. Well, that's actually absurd. He didn't appoint a special counsel. Boutros, who he went to Illinois to get, reports to him.

20:52One, financing lawsuits is not illegal at all. Peter Thiel, Trump's very close friend, famously financed Hulk Hogan's case against Gawker, which ended up making a media entity go bankrupt. Two, the allegation of perjury on this other issue has already been ruled on, as you pointed out, Ari. E. Jean Carroll didn't know that her lawyer was getting some help financing her lawsuit. Three, Todd Blanche's DOJ moved on May 6th to substitute us, the United States, our country, the taxpayers, instead of Donald J. Trump as the defendant in the E.G. Jean Carroll case, citing the law that if a government employee during the scope of employment does something wrong, they're immune, but you can sue the government.

21:51So Donald Trump's DOJ, Todd Blanche, his personal lawyer, even now he's acting as his personal lawyer, has moved to substitute the United States of America for Donald Trump in his appeal to the Supreme Court of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, meaning the taxpayers should pay the$83 million and the taxpayers should defend him in front of the Supreme Court. It's absolutely mind boggling that this is going on. Yeah. Yeah, it's upside down. And to tie it all together, they Trump and his team, they lost in civil court. I mean, Blanche is part of a team that lost this case and they haven't won any of these revenge cases.

22:34So that the losing continues amid the problems that both of our guests have mentioned, Nancy and Sarah. Thanks to both of you. Coming up, we have an eye on corruption, sunlight, the best disinfectant, the White House in trouble, for a parent intervention to get a half billion dollar contract for a company linked to a Trump family member. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is also here on a different illegal plot that involves the absurdity you see on your screen. Federal law bars living people from being on our currency. It's going to get tested. That's next.

23:10Artificial intelligence is moving very, very fast, and it's raising new questions just about every day about what it is, what it isn't. When all is said and done, what is the endgame? I'm Chris Hayes, and as part of my podcast, Why Is This Happening, I'm speaking with leading experts each week to help ground that conversation. We're right now in a situation where it's very difficult to understand what is real and what's not real. Why Is This Happening? The AI Endgame, a special miniseries from MSNOW. Start listening today, wherever you get your podcasts.

23:44We are following another story that involves Donald Trump blatantly breaking the law. So before we get into what they're trying to do, which is part of the Trump game, right? Get everyone outraged and talking about stuff, but we are a nation of laws. And so I'm going to tell you first, there is very clear federal law on how we do U.S. currency. Federal law allows only deceased people to appear on bills. That is just a clear rule which prevents all the politicians who might be tempted, whether in the government, the White House or Congress, to start having competition among living people. They knew enough to just ban it outright under law.

24:22So that's where we start tonight on this story, because that's clearly illegal. And yet this is not a novelty item or a meme from the Internet. The Washington Post reports this mock-up for the 250th anniversary is something that Trump officials are discussing trying to do illegally to put the living president on the bills. A director who was involved in this was reassigned, showing just how much the Trump officials are trying to get anyone in who was willing to do this and break the law. In the resignation, a departure email, I should say, she said it wasn't her choice and that the buck stopped here.

25:00Now, whether Donald Trump gets away with this or not, any honest judge would very easily stop an effort to actually get government resources printing these bills because it would be pretty easy to sue. And then you'd look at the law that says, well, it can't be any living person. It's not an anti-president rule. It's not an anti-Trump rule. It's just the rule under law. And so unless Congress were to change that, and this Republican Senate right now doesn't seem very interested in helping Trump do more vanity projects, That's just where we're at. The wider context is that Trump is in a polling crash amid an open-ended war, ceasefire situation, and a gas crunch, and high prices, and a rattled party heading into the midterms.

25:42And yet he hasn't changed his strategy at all. I mean, if Republicans had their way, they would de-Trumpify and de-nationalize the midterms and try to see where they could land. Instead, they are dealing with someone who's not using political strategy, let alone planning for them and the party, just someone who wants to slap his name and remake America in his image. Slap it on everything.

26:06The State Department plans to start issuing thousands of U.S. passports bearing the image of President Trump. Sought to leave his footprint and very often his name on landmarks across the Capitol. The president's name and image have also been added to the Kennedy Center and Institute of Peace. Large banners with the president's picture have been hung from the Justice, agriculture and labor departments. Front of the coin will feature this image of Donald Trump. 250 of a triumphal arch. President Trump's White House ballroom project is set to face more legal challenges. When there are legal challenges, Trump has at times tried to basically or literally bulldoze through them.