Legal Fight Escalates Over Leftist Billionaire’s Funding of E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Trump
2nd September 2026
A watchdog group is pressing New York to act against the lawyer for E. Jean Carroll for allegedly failing to disclose that Democrat donor Reid Hoffman bankrolled the defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump.
In July, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a bar complaint with the Attorney Grievance Committee against Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, alleging that she was not transparent about the role of Democrat megadonor Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, in bankrolling Carroll’s lawsuit.
By August, the committee dismissed the complaint without addressing the question directly.
“The dismissal was made without conducting any investigation, let alone a ‘thorough investigation’ that this committee promises to undertake for misconduct complaints,” the appeal filed by Paul Kamenar, chief counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, says.
The appeal said the essence of the original complaint was that “Kaplan waited almost six months after the deposition of her client, E. Jean Carroll, until the eve of trial to correct Ms. Carroll’s false statement in an October 2022 deposition that she was not receiving any outside funding for her defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.”