Justice Department Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine writer who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The investigation centers on whether Carroll committed perjury in lawsuits against Trump, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Carroll won a $5 million civil judgment against Trump that he had sexually abused and defamed her, which the president in November asked the Supreme Court to overturn. She also won a $83 million civil judgment against him in another defamation case.

An inquiry into Carroll would represent the latest chapter in Trump’s retribution campaign, which has been carried out by Justice Department officials. A number of figures who brought criminal and civil cases against Trump have come under the department’s scrutiny, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and other adversaries of the president.

Andrew Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, opened the inquiry into Carroll, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. The investigation was reported earlier by CNN.

Carroll’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, is said to have recused himself from the probe because of his prior representation of Trump, although officials from department headquarters have been involved in the inquiry.

The investigation comes at a volatile moment in a Justice Department that appears to be increasingly controlled by Trump, who has faced little pushback from department leadership as he accelerates his campaign of retribution against those who accused, challenged or defied him in the past.

Blanche has aggressively pursued investigations against people Trump has targeted. Last month, the department charged Comey over a social media post of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47,” which prosecutors said was a threat against Trump. Comey has said he did not associate the phrase with violence and denied wrongdoing.

Trump’s revenge campaign kicked into high gear in September when he publicly demanded that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi move to prosecute several of his adversaries. Within several weeks, a newly selected prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia had indicted Comey and James. But both of those cases were thrown out by a judge, and, despite the newer indictment of Comey last month, the department has struggled to gain traction in a number of cases against Trump’s adversaries.

Carroll’s accusations are among the most severe leveled against the president, and he has long sought to demean and discredit her.

In one area of contention before the first trial, Trump’s lawyers wrote to the judge, accusing Carroll of concealing financial support her case received from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a strong critic of Trump’s.

The lawyers said the eventual disclosure of the funding raised “significant questions” about Carroll’s credibility. Her lawyers, in their own letter to the court, argued that Hoffman’s financial support was irrelevant to Carroll’s legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding.

A spokesperson for Hoffman did not respond Wednesday night to a request for comment.

In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. The jury also found that Trump had defamed her by saying on his social media site that her case was a hoax and a lie.

Carroll was awarded $5 million by the jury, a verdict upheld on appeal in December 2024, a month before Trump was sworn in for his second term, when a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected his request for a new trial. The panel said Trump had “not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.”

Trump won a delay this month in another defamation case in which Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in January 2024 after another trial in Manhattan.

The verdict included $65 million in punitive damages after the jury found that Trump had acted with malice in defaming Carroll. Her lawyers argued to the jury that a large verdict was necessary to stop Trump from continuing his attacks on her, which he made at news conferences, in social media posts and during the trial itself.

Trump, who did not testify against Carroll at the first trial, took the stand briefly in the second. The $83.3 million verdict was also upheld by the 2nd Circuit in a unanimous three-judge ruling.

The appeals panel said Trump “never wavered or relented in his public attacks” on Carroll, and that she was subjected to public harassment as a result of his statements, including death threats and threats of physical injury.

The court ruled that Trump did not have to pay the judgment, as he intends to appeal to the Supreme Court.

It was not immediately clear why the investigation of Carroll was being conducted by Boutros, who is based in Chicago, although a nonprofit associated with Hoffman is there.

The Justice Department’s leadership has made extensive use of a provision that allows the designation of cases to handpicked prosecutors across the country, regardless of whether possible crimes occurred in their jurisdictions.

The department assigned its investigation into John Brennan, the former CIA director, to the U.S. attorney in Miami, Jason Reding Quiñones, because he was seen as more willing to pursue a case viewed as questionable by other offices, according to former officials.

The conduct of prosecutors under Boutros’ supervision has come under serious criticism in recent days.

Last Thursday, he announced that misdemeanor charges against people who had protested outside an immigration detention facility near Chicago last year would be dismissed.

In a hearing in downtown Chicago, Boutros said that potential misconduct by prosecutors during the grand jury process had led to the dismissal.

Defense lawyers said that prosecutors working under Boutros held conversations with individual grand jurors outside the courtroom about the case, a breach of rules.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Glenn Thrush and Benjamin Weiser/Dave Sanders
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

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