FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—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.”
The complaint accused Kaplan of violating the rules of professional conduct for New York state lawyers by misleading the court and possibly her client about Hoffman’s funding of the case.
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Tax filings from 2023 for Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, show it paid $7 million to Carroll’s lawyers to help cover legal expenses. In October 2022, Carroll was asked under oath if “anyone else [is] paying your legal fees.” Carroll answered, “No.”
Carroll won a $5 million payout from Trump in a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit, upheld by the Supreme Court. In a separate defamation lawsuit, she won an $83 million judgment against Trump, which the high court has not yet ruled on.
Attorney Grievance Committee Chief Counsel Jorge Dopico dismissed the complaint, asserting the matter was “brought before and addressed by the court handling this lawsuit.”
Kamenar said the court only considered Carroll’s testimony, but not her lawyer’s obligations to tell the court that her client did not give accurate information.
“In fact, the ‘matter’ that was brought before the court was not Ms. Kaplan’s unethical conduct but whether her client had lied under oath in her deposition by answering ‘No’ to defense counsel’s question as to whether she was receiving outside funding,” the appeal says. “The court addressed that ‘matter’ by allowing counsel to depose Ms. Carroll again ‘limited to the subject of Ms. Carroll’s knowledge of the financing assistance as of the date of her deposition and as of the present.’”
The appeal Tuesday was addressed to Attorney Grievance Committee Co-Chairs Tina M. Wells and Milton L. Williams Jr.
“If the committee does not reverse the summary dismissal of our complaint, it smacks of a coverup,” Kamenar told the Daily Signal.
The Daily Signal contacted the New York law firm of Kaplan Martin, where Kaplan practices. The office did not respond by publication time. The Daily Signal also reached out to a spokesman for Hoffman, who did not respond by publication time.
Previously, a Kaplan Martin spokesman did not comment, but referred The Daily Signal to the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals, which had rejected Trump’s claim about a lack of disclosure, which did not address alleged conduct by Kaplan.
In its review of Carroll’s answer to whether the lawsuit was getting outside funding, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined, “There was no evidence to suggest that Ms. Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder, received an invoice showing the arrangement before or after her counsel received the outside funding, or had discussed the arrangement with anyone between learning of it in September 2020 and being deposed in October 2022.”
Hoffman previously said in a 2023 Washington Post interview that he never tried to keep his funding secret, and, “My team looked at it, thought that her [Carroll’s] voice should be heard because she was challenging someone who was so much more wealthy and powerful—it shouldn’t be squashed.”
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