- LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman contributed money to a nonprofit funding E. Jean Carroll's rape lawsuit against Trump.
- The judge said Wednesday that jurors couldn't hear evidence related to his funding of the case.
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that jurors in Donald Trump's rape trial can't hear any evidence related to a critical-of-Trump billionaire partially funding the case.
The issue of whether billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman contributed money towards E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against the former president, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said, "would be prejudicial" because it has no bearing on Carroll's allegations.
"The whole subject of litigation funding is precluded," the judge said Wednesday afternoon in a downtown Manhattan courtroom.
Weeks before the trial began, Kaplan allowed Trump's lawyers to obtain additional documents and ask Carroll more deposition questions after they had discovered that Hoffman contributed funds to her legal effort. Hoffman has been publicly critical of Trump and he and his organizations have historically contributed funds to Democrats.
The funding issue had no bearing on the merits of Carroll's claims, Kaplan said earlier. But, he said in his earlier decision, it could raise questions for jurors about Carroll's credibility since she previously said she had no knowledge of the external funds. Documents related to the litigation funding issue were to be filed under seal, the judge ruled.
Upon reviewing the additional material obtained by Trump's lawyers, Kaplan said it had no bearing on Carroll's credibility, and that the potential risk of causing unfairness to Carroll outweighed whatever minuscule relevance it has in the case.
"I've determined there is virtually nothing there in terms of credibility," Kaplan said from the bench Wednesday.
About an hour before Kaplan's ruling, the former president's son Eric Trump posted about Hoffman on Truth Social and Twitter.
"Zoom Out: Jean Carroll's legal battle against my father is allegedly being FUNDED by political activist Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Linkedin)," Eric Trump wrote. "A civil lawsuit, being funded by a billionaire, with no direct involvement in the case, out of pure hatred, spite or fear of a formidable candidate, is an embarrassment to our country, should be illegal and tells you everything you need to know about the case at hand..."
The judge warned Joe Tacopina, an attorney representing Trump in the trial, that both the former president and his son could be in trouble over the public comments.
"Your client is perhaps sailing into harm's way with his son," the judge said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kaplan instructed Tacopina to "talk to your client" over Truth Social posts Trump made criticizing Carroll and referencing other potential pieces of evidence that Kaplan said would not be permitted to be shown to jurors in the case. He warned that the social media comments could amount to "tampering" with the jury.
"There are some relevant United States statutes here, and someone ought to be thinking about them," Kaplan said.
Kaplan's ruling came during a break in court, in the middle of testimony from Carroll. Earlier Wednesday, she described on the stand an incident where she alleged Trump raped her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman's department store in the mid-1990s, and said that her lawsuit wasn't politically motivated even while she normally supports Democrats politically.
"He's vile," she said of Trump.
Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle, first went public with her rape allegation against Trump in a 2019 essay for New York magazine. Trump has vehemently denied the claim, accused Carroll of making up the story to sell her memoir, and said she wasn't his "type."
Carroll is suing Trump for battery, in relation to the alleged rape, and for defamation over comments he posted to Truth Social in October 2022. She brought the case last year after New York passed a law that temporarily allowed sexual assault lawsuits to be filed in cases where the statute of limitations had passed.
Carroll also filed an earlier defamation lawsuit against Trump in 2019. That case had been put on hold while Trump's lawyers argue federal law shields him from being sued for defamation over comments he made while he was president.