A White House liaison to the Department of Justice reportedly solicited a department attorney for damaging information on writer E. Jean Carroll, who is suing President Donald Trump for defamation after he attacked her in response to her allegation that he had raped her in the 1990s.
The Guardian reported that the liaison, Heidi Stirrup, asked the unnamed lawyer for dirt on Carroll that could be relayed to Trump’s private legal team shortly after a judge shot down the Justice Department’s bid to serve as Trump’s defense in the lawsuit last October.
Stirrup also reportedly sought evidence that Carroll was conspiring with Democrats to make false accusations against Trump.
The attorney told the Guardian that they had rejected Stirrup’s request “in the strongest possible terms.”
The White House aide was banned from the Justice Department building in December after similarly trying to obtain information on supposed election fraud and other pet issues of Trump’s.
The DOJ and the White House did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
Carroll and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, asserted in a joint statement that if the report on Stirring’s gambit is true, “it is yet further evidence of the multiple ways in which Donald Trump misused DOJ lawyers, especially in our case.”
