Trump’s retribution campaign has taken an even more disturbing turn

President Trump appears to have a new target in his retribution campaign – agony aunt E Jean Carroll.

She’s as tough as old boots but I fear for her well-being. Now 82, a few years older than him, she’s going to need every ounce of strength she has to face down new challenges to the case against the man she accused of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a New York department store 30 years ago.

Carroll is back in the spotlight because the US Justice Department is reportedly opening a criminal investigation into the source of funding for her defamation case against Trump, after he angrily denied all her allegations against him.

Weakened and out of office in 2023-24, when two juries found in Carroll’s favour, he now possesses the full might of the US presidency in his fight for vindication.

Trump currently owes Carroll $5m for calling her a “liar” and a “nut job”, and a further $83.3m in punitive damages awarded for continuing to insult her. He is hoping the conservative-leaning Supreme Court will overturn both verdicts, but they have yet to decide whether to take on the case.

Carroll is defiant, funny and worldly wise, but she must be feeling scared. In its opening salvo, the Justice Department appears to be going after a non-profit, American Future Republic, backed by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, which contributed to Carroll’s litigation costs. As the New York Times notes, though, this doesn’t mean Carroll herself won’t be investigated. While the prosecutor has stated he has not opened a direct investigation into Carroll, by looking into the source of her funding, she will already be feeling under scrutiny.

Initially, Carroll claimed in court that she was funding her own legal action before her lawyers were later obliged to clarify that Hoffman’s organisation was involved. At the time, Carroll’s lawyer told the judge that her client had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding and Carroll had only just recalled that her lawyers had secured the funding for certain expenses and fees. The judge accepted this and barred Trump’s lawyers from introducing such evidence at the 2023 trial, in which a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5m in damages.

If the Justice Department can establish that Carroll lied over the more trifling matter of funding, her entire set of allegations against Trump – first levelled during the Me Too era when she published a book in 2019 about men – could collapse like a pack of cards.

For Trump, any attempt to discredit Carroll and Hoffman is a “twofer” – a two-for-one attack on the woman who accused him of assault and the only tech billionaire in Silicon Valley to have refused to bend the knee to him.

It is unfortunate for Carroll that her statements over funding have given the Justice Department an opening, but it is far from clear that either she or Hoffman’s non-profit has done anything wrong.

The potential criminal investigation is seemingly part of a pattern of harassment – faced by former FBI chief James Comey, among others – in which the lives of perceived enemies of Trump can be made miserable by legal action, whatever the strength of the case against them.

Coincidentally, a new documentary has just been released called Ask E Jean, the name of her long-running former advice column in Elle magazine. The film hails her as the “only woman to have beaten Trump in court – twice.” If the Justice Department has its way, she may have to go back into the witness box for a third time.

Ask E Jean shows Carroll’s journey from Miss Cheerleader USA to celebrated journalist and long-running advice columnist. I remember consulting her years ago for an article on the evergreen subject of women struggling to find life partners. She told me, “You gotta go where the guys are. Don’t go to the ballet, go to baseball games and rodeos.”

Given this, I doubt she expected to run into Trump, then in his property tycoon phase, while shopping at Bergdorf Goodman. She claims he stopped to ask her advice on a gift, they went to the lingerie department, he suggested she try on an outfit, followed her into a changing room, and sexually assaulted her in the department store. Trump has disputed the claims, calling Carroll a “total wack job” and said the attack could not have happened because she was not his physical “type”. People tend to believe whoever they please. But two juries decided to believe Carroll.

All the money they awarded her has yet to materialise. She has faced death threats and abuse from critics as well as admiration from her friends. In the film, we hear from a friend, Lisa Birnbach, in whom she confided shortly after the alleged assault occurred.

“I was very disappointed that you wouldn’t report him,” Birbach recalled.

“They never would have believed me,” Carroll retorted.

Another clip shows Alina Habib, Trump’s lawyer, asking Carroll, “If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud, why would you choose to sue Donald Trump?”

Carroll replied, “Because he called me a liar, and I couldn’t let it stand.”

But the Me Too movement that inspired her to come forward has faced some damaging blows. Only a fortnight ago, a New York jury was unable to reach a verdict for a second time against film producer Harvey Weinstein, after he was initially convicted of rape. His accuser said sadly that she chose “integrity even when the process flayed me open”.

A judge has already accepted that Carroll believed she was telling the truth when she claimed to have funded her own case. But the political climate was more favourable to her then than now.

First you identify your target, then you find the alleged crime. That’s the way justice works in Trumpland.