DOJ Investigating E. Jean Carroll for Perjury After Denying Hoffman Funded Her Lawyers
Plus: Paxton gets the nomination and the pedophile plea deal, Talarico gets the “God is non-binary” ad, and Erika Kirk gets bomb threats nine months after her husband was assassinated.
It’s Friday!
My feeds have been dominated by Talarico. Annoying for obvious reasons, but also because I know there is other news. At least it’s Friday!
Let’s get into the news.
In Today’s Read
The DOJ opened a criminal probe into Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit after E. Jean Carroll told the court no outside money was funding her lawyers. A billionaire was cutting checks.
Ken Paxton won the Texas GOP Senate runoff by 27 points, and within 48 hours it became the ugliest incoming race in America: a pedophile plea deal versus a “God is non-binary” floor speech.
Two threats against conservative women hit the same week. One got national coverage. The other got Fox and local Texas TV.
A former CIA officer was arrested with 303 gold bars, $2 million cash, and fake credentials.
Hamas confirmed its fourth military wing chief killed since the war began.
Reid Hoffman Paid the Bills. She Said Nobody Was Paying the Bills. The DOJ Is Now Asking About It.
The Story.
The Story. On May 27, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into American Future Republic, the Chicago-based nonprofit founded by LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman. The nonprofit paid $7 million to Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the law firm representing E. Jean Carroll in her civil suits against Donald Trump. Prosecutors are examining money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy charges. The perjury question centers on Carroll's 2022 deposition, in which she said her lawyers were working on contingency. Hoffman's payments were disclosed to the court two weeks before trial. The Chicago U.S. Attorney's Office has clarified that Carroll herself is not the target; the probe is focused on the nonprofit and its funding structure.
The Left’s read. MSNBC’s Maddow blog frames it as “weaponization” of the Justice Department. Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade calls it a vindictive prosecution waiting to be tossed. The Washington Post emphasizes that Carroll isn’t a target, the funding was disclosed pre-trial, and prosecutors are stretching to find a crime. The consensus frame: this is Trump using the DOJ to punish a woman who beat him in court.
The Right’s read. The Washington Examiner and PJ Media treat the probe as vindication. The lawsuit that produced a half-billion-dollar verdict was bankrolled by a Democratic megadonor with a political motive, and the plaintiff’s sworn testimony didn’t reflect that. Newsweek leans into the perjury angle as the prosecutable thread.
What both sides are skipping. Neither side is treating this as a story about how billionaire money flowing through 501(c)(4) nonprofits has become the operating system of high-profile political lawfare. Hoffman’s American Future Republic isn’t his only nonprofit vehicle. The left wants it to be about Trump’s vendetta. The right wants it to be about Carroll’s deposition. The bigger thread is the structure itself. And here’s the part nobody is connecting: Carroll told CNN she personally helped push New York Democrats to pass the Adult Survivors Act in 2022, the law that created the one-year lookback window that made her case possible. Hoffman funded the legal team. The plaintiff helped create the law. The same billionaire’s money sat behind both the lawsuit and the plaintiff who advocated for the statute that enabled it. That’s not a scandal. It might be perfectly legal. But it is a system, and the press should describe it as such.
Depositions are under oath. That’s the part everyone is skating past to get to the framing they prefer.
“My lawyers work on contingency” is either true or it isn’t. Carroll said it under oath in a 2022 deposition. Meanwhile, a billionaire’s nonprofit was writing seven-figure checks to her law firm. The funding was disclosed to the court two weeks before trial, which the left is using to argue there’s nothing to see. But “disclosed before trial” is not the same as “told the truth under oath during discovery.” Those are different legal moments with different legal consequences, and the press covering this story knows the difference. They’re choosing not to explain it.
If a Republican megadonor had funded a lawsuit against, say, Hillary Clinton, and the plaintiff testified under oath that no outside money was involved, MSNBC would be running a five-part series titled Follow the Money. You know it. I know it.
We’ve seen this movie before. In 2016, Peter Thiel spent $10 million secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Billionaire bankroll, personal vendetta, media company destroyed by the verdict. The left treated it as a five-alarm free-press emergency. Hoffman’s operation is the mirror image: billionaire bankroll, political target, nonprofit conduit, sworn testimony that didn’t mention the money. The left’s response this time? “Weaponization.”
The mock defense writes itself: “This is just Trump using the DOJ to punish a woman who beat him in court.” Maybe. It might also be that a person under oath answered a direct question about who was paying her lawyers, and the answer was not the whole truth. Both can be true. I don’t want the DOJ pursuing dubious cases against anyone, friend or enemy. I also don’t want a press corps that decides perjury matters only when the right person is alleged to have committed it.
Pick one and live with the standard.
Paxton Got the Nomination. Then Talarico Got the Pedophile Plea Deal. Then Paxton’s First Ad Hit “God Is Non-Binary.” Welcome to the Race.
The Story.
On May 26, Texas AG Ken Paxton beat three-term Sen. John Cornyn 60-33 in the GOP runoff after a last-minute Trump endorsement. Within 48 hours, Democrat James Talarico launched his opening salvo: Adam Hoffman, a Waco man charged with sexually abusing a young boy over three years, who got a plea deal from Paxton's office for two misdemeanors and no sex-offender registry.
Here's what Talarico leaves out. McLennan County DA Josh Tetens recused himself because Hoffman had sought his counsel when Tetens was a defense attorney. The case went to Paxton's office by default. The trial ended in a hung jury, 7-5 for a guilty verdict. The child victim made clear he would not testify again. Without his star witness, the prosecution's hand collapsed. The visiting judge doubled the proposed sentence from 30 to 60 days. Hoffman was released after 29 on good-behavior credit. Talarico on CBS: "If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles."
Paxton's first ad fired back with Talarico's 2021 Texas House floor speech declaring "God is non-binary." Talarico is a Presbyterian seminarian who raised $27 million in Q1.
The Left’s read. CNN, the Washington Post, and Daily Kos lead with Paxton’s scandal sheet: securities fraud indictment, impeachment by his own party 121-23, Senate acquittal 16-14, FBI probe triggered by eight of his own aides. The Hoffman plea is the new front-page exhibit. Diana Butler Bass frames it as “a straight up religious argument between Christianity as a religion of love for neighbor and Christian authoritarianism.”
The Right’s read. Fox News called Paxton’s win a “MAGA triumph.” Newsmax’s Laura Hollis urged Paxton not to dodge the Christianity fight, arguing Talarico’s positions on abortion and gender are not consistent with historic Christian teaching.
What both sides are skipping. The left is running the Hoffman plea deal as a Paxton scandal without mentioning that Paxton’s office inherited the case on a recusal, that the jury hung, or that the child refused to testify again. Those details don’t make the outcome acceptable, but they do make Talarico’s “Epstein-style sweetheart deal” framing dishonest about why the prosecution’s hand was weak. Meanwhile, the right is running “God is non-binary” as though it’s the only thing Talarico has ever said on camera. It’s not. There’s also the anti-meat clip, the sermon saying the “trans community needs abortion care too,” the 2020 tweets calling racism a virus spread by white people, and the 2019 comments about police in schools creating a “culture of violence.” These are all on video. Talarico told NBC he “missed the mark” on some old comments and called them “cringey.” The left-leaning press is helping him create that distance by treating each clip as an isolated GOP attack rather than a pattern of stated positions he held until they became inconvenient for a statewide race.
Two things are true and the press will pretend they’re not.
The Hoffman plea deal is ugly. I want to be clear about that. A child was abused for three years, the jury leaned guilty 7-5, and the outcome was 29 days in county jail and no sex-offender registry. That should make anyone sick. But "Paxton personally cut a deal for a pedophile" is a campaign line, not a description of what happened. The local DA, Josh Tetens, recused himself because Hoffman had consulted with him before Tetens took office. Paxton's AG office stepped in because that's what happens when the local DA can't prosecute. The trial hung. The child victim said he would not take the stand again. The prosecution lost its star witness, and its case collapsed. The visiting judge could have gone higher and chose 60 days. If there's corruption in that sequence, show me the evidence. If there isn't, then say what the case actually was: a prosecution that lost its witness and settled for what it could get. That's not a defense. It's an explanation. Talarico knows the difference. He's choosing the campaign line anyway.
And let’s talk about Talarico, because the press is running a rebrand on him in real time and hoping nobody notices.
This is not a fresh-faced seminarian who made one provocative comment on the Texas House floor. This is a politician with years of on-camera statements about God’s gender, veganism, policing, and race. The “God is non-binary” speech. The sermon where he said the “trans community needs abortion care too.” The anti-meat clip. The 2020 tweets calling racism a virus spread by white people. The 2019 comments about police in schools creating a “culture of violence.” These are all on video. He said them. He meant them at the time. And now he’s calling them “cringey” because Texas is not Austin, and a statewide race is not a House floor speech in a safe district.
The left-leaning press is helping him create distance by treating each clip as an isolated bad-faith Republican attack instead of asking the obvious question: Do you still believe what you said, or were you performing for a different audience?
The race is going to be ugly because both candidates have issues.
ICYMI
DSA members just won Democratic primaries, and everyone's acting surprised. They've been building locally for years. I wrote about it when fewer people were paying attention. It was behind the paywall — I've opened it up.
There's Probably a DSA Member on Your City Council. Here's What You Weren't Told.
As of August 2025, more than 250 members of the Democratic Socialists of America held elected public office in the United States. Roughly ninety percent of them were elected after 2019. The list includes 96 city councilors and county commissioners, eight mayors or county executives, and significant blocs on major city councils. Seven of fifty seats in C…
Erika Kirk Got Bomb Threats Nine Months After Burying Her Husband. Ivanka Trump Got an IRGC Assassination Plot. One Got National Coverage.
The Story.
Two threat events bookended the week. On May 23, federal authorities unsealed charges against Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a 32-year-old Iraqi national allegedly trained by Iran’s IRGC, extradited from Turkey after a foiled assassination plot against Ivanka Trump as revenge for the 2020 Soleimani strike. Prosecutors say he had a floor plan of her Florida home and posted a map on X with an Arabic-language threat. He was tied to nearly 20 plots across Europe and North America. He faces six terrorism counts in Manhattan federal court.
On May 28, San Antonio police arrested Jacob Wenske, 26, on two felony terroristic-threat charges. The emails: “Death to Erika Kirk and every single speaker there!!” A social media reply: “I know exactly where to bomb.” The target was the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit scheduled for June 5-7 at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter. Erika Kirk is the CEO of TPUSA and widow of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
The Left’s read. Mainstream outlets covered the Ivanka plot as a foreign-terror story with geopolitical context: IRGC, Soleimani retaliation, the broader Iranian threat network. Coverage was steady and factual. The Kirk threat received minimal national attention from left-of-center outlets, following the same pattern that played out with the Charlie Kirk assassination coverage in fall 2025.
The Right’s read. Fox News, the Washington Examiner, RedState, and the Daily Caller covered both threats as part of one pattern. Capitol Police logged over 14,000 threat investigations against lawmakers on pace for 2026, up from 9,474 in 2024.
What both sides are skipping. The two threats have different operational profiles. Al-Saadi is a state-sponsored foreign operative trained by a designated terrorist organization. Wenske is a domestic individual. Lumping them together is sloppy. Treating them as unrelated is also sloppy. The asymmetric press response is a separate problem from the threat analysis, and it’s the one worth naming.
Imagine a series of Democratic congresswomen were receiving bomb threats nine months after a colleague was assassinated on a college campus. Imagine the widow of the murdered man took over his organization and, within eight months, a man was arrested for emailing “Death to [her name]” before her women’s summit. Imagine the same week, a foreign operative was indicted for plotting to assassinate the daughter of a former Democratic president.
Every newsroom in America would be running a daily threat tracker on the front page. Everyone would know Erika Kirk’s name the way you know Gabby Giffords’s name. There would be a CNN special. There would be a Time cover. There would be think pieces about the climate of violence against women in public life. And every one of those pieces would be correct.
But the targets are conservative women. So the Ivanka plot gets foreign-terror coverage because the IRGC fingerprints make it geopolitically respectable. And Erika Kirk gets Fox and local Texas TV. That’s it. Her husband was murdered in front of a crowd in September. She took the CEO job. Eight months later, bomb threats. And the press that covered every angle of the Charlie Kirk assassination for about 72 hours before moving on has already moved on from this too.
The defense, “Right-wing extremism has historically killed more people, so the aggregate data justifies the coverage imbalance.” Except the aggregate data doesn’t say what they think it says anymore. CSIS tracked domestic terrorism incidents through early 2025 and found that for the first time in thirty years, attacks from the left outnumber attacks from the right. The University of Maryland’s dataset logged over 150 politically motivated attacks and plots in 2024 alone, with left-wing incidents surging. The narrative that right-wing violence is the only domestic threat worth covering isn’t supported by the data they claim to follow. It’s supported by the story they prefer to tell.
And Charlie Kirk wasn’t some random activist. His assassination was the most significant political assassination in recent American history. But the press covered it for about 72 hours and moved on, because the victim was a conservative and the killing didn’t fit the “right-wing extremism is the real threat” framework they’d spent a decade building. When Erika Kirk shows up in coverage at all, it’s framed as MAGA drama, not as a widow who took over her murdered husband’s organization and immediately started receiving death threats. A bomb threat eight months after a successful assassination isn’t a culture-war sidebar. It’s a pattern. And covering it honestly would mean acknowledging that violence against the right is rising, which would mean revisiting every editorial decision they’ve made since Charlottesville. They’d rather not.
The press isn’t required to like conservative women. It is required to treat threats against them as news.
Hamas confirms new military chief killed in Israeli strike. Mohammed Odeh, head of the al-Qassam Brigades and identified as an October 7 architect, was killed in a Gaza City airstrike May 26. His wife and two sons were also killed. Fourth Hamas military wing chief eliminated since the war began. Second in 11 days.
U.S. and Iran reach tentative 60-day ceasefire extension, await Trump approval. Negotiators agreed to a 60-day MOU with Strait of Hormuz terms and a nuclear-talks framework. Trump was briefed Tuesday and said he’s “not satisfied.” The White House called reports a “complete fabrication.” Tehran hasn’t confirmed. So either there’s a deal, or there isn’t, or there’s a deal nobody wants to own yet.
Ex-CIA official arrested with 303 gold bars and a fake resume. The FBI arrested former senior CIA officer David Rush at his Virginia home, seizing $40 million in gold, $2 million cash, and 35 luxury watches. He allegedly faked Navy-pilot credentials and advanced degrees to get his security clearance. CIA internal probe opened. Somebody watched Catch Me If You Can and thought it was a training manual.
Blue Origin rocket explodes at Cape Canaveral. The New Glenn rocket exploded during a hotfire test on May 28. No injuries. It was preparing to launch 48 Amazon Kuiper satellites. The program was already grounded since April after an engine failure on its third flight. Jeff Bezos’s space program is having a quarter.
Six protesters arrested after clash with ICE officers outside NJ detention center. Over 100 protesters clashed with ICE at Delaney Hall in Newark. Pepper balls and mace were fired. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and other Congress members were denied facility access. DHS denies a hunger strike is underway; detainee attorneys say 300 are striking over conditions. Sen. Andy Kim was pepper sprayed.
Mullin “drawing up plans” to halt international flight processing in sanctuary cities. DHS Secretary Mullin cited the Newark protests as rationale for drafting plans to pull customs processing from sanctuary-city airports including Newark, LAX, SFO, and O’Hare. Not yet initiated. Airlines and tourism groups called it “devastating.” Whether it’s a real policy or a pressure campaign depends on whether you read the follow-through or just the headline.
Freedom 250's Great American State Fair lineup is collapsing in real time. The 16-day America's-250th celebration on the National Mall (June 25-July 10) announced its concert lineup this week, and within 48 hours Martina McBride, the Commodores, Morris Day, Young MC, and Bret Michaels all pulled out after learning the event had Trump-administration ties. McBride said she was told it was nonpartisan, which "turned out to be misleading." Left-leaning outlets are counting every withdrawal like a box score, and The New Republic preemptively mocked the lineup before half of it had even dropped. Vanilla Ice is still in. Make of that what you will.
Shrey Parikh wins the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga won the 98th bee at Constitution Hall, defeating 12-year-old Ishaan Gupta in a spell-off, 32 words to 25. Third trip to nationals. From 89th place in 2022 to champion. That’s the kind of persistence most adults give up on after the second rejection email.
That’s The Read.
Enjoy the weekend. For my friends in the south, stay dry. We needed the rain, but I don’t know about you, but I could use a break.
Closing the laptop for the weekend
See you Monday!
If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.
And now Adam Hoffman lives in Nebraska and his wife is a public school teacher. 😬