A conservative nonprofit is looking to get E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer disciplined after Donald Trump suffered fresh humiliation in connection with the magazine columnist’s lawsuit against him.
In a letter to the New York Attorney Grievance Committee, the National Legal and Policy Center submitted a misconduct complaint against attorney Roberta Kaplan on Thursday. The conservative advocacy group accuses Kaplan of violating conduct rules for failing to correct what the group alleges was false testimony during Carroll’s deposition in her 2022 defamation case.
In her deposition, Carroll said her legal fees were not being funded, but the conservative group claims that Kaplan “knew that answer was false but waited almost six months later until the eve of trial to correct the record by informing opposing counsel and the court that indeed Mr. Hoffman, a vocal Trump critic who associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein” had funded the lawsuit.
A nonprofit affiliated with Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, is said to have made contributions that were partially used for Carroll’s legal expenses.
The NLPC has now asked New York’s attorney disciplinary authorities to look into whether Kaplan committed ethical violations.
The Daily Beast contacted Kaplan for comment.
Trump was ordered to pay Carroll more than $5 million, now around $5.8 million with interest, after a civil jury found the president sexually abused her and defamed her after she publicly disclosed the allegations.
The conservative push for Kaplan to face disciplinary action comes just days after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s long-shot bid to have the ruling appealed. The high court declined to take up the case in an unexplained order. No justices publicly dissented, which strongly suggests a unanimous court decision.
Trump’s lawyers tried to argue that the judge in the case broke federal evidence rules and claimed it was a distraction from Trump’s responsibilities as president, although the verdict was reached long before he returned to the White House last year.
A jury found that Trump had assaulted the former Elle magazine columnist in a luxury Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump has repeatedly denied doing so, and has claimed to have never met her and that she is “not his type.”
