The Department of Justice has reportedly launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine writer who won tens of millions of dollars in civil judgments against President Donald Trump, and who now faces scrutiny over whether she lied under oath about who was bankrolling her lawsuits.
The probe, first detailed by the Daily Mail, centers on Carroll's 2022 videotaped deposition. In that sworn testimony, Carroll told Trump's then-attorney Alina Habba that nobody else was paying her legal fees. That claim unraveled just two weeks before trial, when Carroll's own lawyers informed the court that billionaire Reid Hoffman's Chicago-based nonprofit had in fact funded some of her legal fees and expenses.
The gap between what Carroll said under oath and what her legal team later disclosed is now the focus of federal prosecutors in Illinois.
Andrew S. Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, opened the inquiry. The jurisdictional hook runs through Chicago, where Hoffman's nonprofit is based. Just The News reported that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recused himself from the investigation because he previously helped represent Trump in the Carroll case.
Blanche's recusal removes one obvious line of attack for Carroll's defenders, that the probe is simply the president's personal lawyer settling a score. But the investigation's existence will still draw accusations of political motivation from those who cheered the original verdicts against Trump.
No formal charges or indictment have been announced. Breitbart noted that the probe may not necessarily result in charges. Still, a criminal perjury investigation is a serious matter, one that could reshape the legal landscape around two civil judgments that Trump has fought to overturn.
The timeline matters. In 2022, Carroll sat for a videotaped deposition and stated under oath that no one else was paying her legal fees. Months passed. Then, roughly two weeks before the trial was set to begin in May 2023, Carroll's attorneys told Judge Lewis Kaplan and Trump's legal team that they had secured funding from Hoffman's nonprofit.
Carroll's lawyers insisted that the writer had never met nor spoken with anyone at Hoffman's organization. But the disclosure came late, so late that Habba argued in court that Carroll's legal team had "conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months" about who was funding the lawsuit.
Judge Kaplan allowed Trump's lawyers to depose Carroll a second time after the funding came to light. That second deposition has not been made public. Then, at trial, Kaplan said he saw no issue with Carroll's credibility and blocked Trump's lawyers from asking the jury about Hoffman's funding.
That sequence of rulings is worth sitting with. A witness gave sworn testimony about funding that turned out to be false. The judge permitted a second deposition, suggesting the discrepancy warranted further inquiry, but then barred the defense from exploring the topic before the jury. The pattern raises fair questions about whether the trial court gave Trump a full opportunity to challenge Carroll's credibility on a material point.
The broader pattern of DOJ actions in Trump-related matters has drawn intense scrutiny in recent years, including questions about the legal basis for the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid under the prior administration.
Carroll first published her accusation in New York Magazine in June 2019, alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump denied it days later.
"I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened."
Trump called Carroll a "liar" and "mentally sick," saying she fabricated the claim to get rich. Carroll sued. In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and for defaming her on social media. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million. A separate defamation case produced an $83 million judgment. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the $5 million verdict and has pledged to fight the larger judgment as well.
Carroll, for her part, gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which she made clear that the money was secondary to the message.
"Money is not important to me. Personally, I couldn't care less about it, so I'm going to give the money to everything Trump hates, like women's rights. My aim is to piss off Donald Trump by giving his money, his hard-earned money, to things he hates."
That quote may not help her case before a grand jury. Prosecutors examining whether Carroll lied about outside funding will note that her stated motive was not justice or compensation but antagonism toward the defendant. It frames the entire litigation as a political project, one in which truthfulness about funding sources would be especially material.
Revelations about how federal agencies handled Trump-related investigations during the Biden era have continued to surface, including FBI memos showing that evidence from Trump investigations was kept sealed until 2030.
Reid Hoffman's role remains partially obscured. The billionaire, a major Democratic donor and LinkedIn co-founder, paid some of Carroll's legal fees and expenses through a nonprofit based in Chicago. How much he contributed, when the arrangement began, and what Carroll knew about it at the time of her 2022 deposition are all questions the investigation will presumably explore.
The Daily Mail reported that it reached out to Carroll, a Hoffman spokesperson, and the DOJ for comment. No responses were included in the report. The Washington Examiner also confirmed that the DOJ has opened the criminal investigation into Carroll.
The shift in DOJ posture under the current administration has been visible across multiple fronts. The department recently reversed course on a Biden-era campaign finance probe involving a Republican congressman, agreeing to return seized property and destroy data, a signal that the institution is reassessing the prior administration's enforcement priorities.
Several open questions hang over this investigation. No one has confirmed whether the DOJ issued a formal statement acknowledging the probe. The contents of Carroll's second deposition, the one taken after the Hoffman disclosure, remain sealed. And the investigation's ultimate trajectory depends on whether prosecutors can show that Carroll knowingly made a false statement under oath, not merely that her lawyers disclosed the funding late.
Perjury is notoriously difficult to prove. Prosecutors must demonstrate that the false statement was willful, not the product of confusion or a misunderstanding about the question. Carroll's defenders will argue that she may not have known the details of her own funding arrangements. Her critics will point to the plain language of the deposition question and the months-long gap before the truth emerged.
Trump's own legal battles with federal agencies have produced a long trail of disputes, settlements, and reversals, including a recent $1.8 billion anti-weaponization settlement with the IRS that drew sharp criticism from Democrats.
The Carroll civil verdicts were celebrated across progressive media as a landmark moment of accountability. But accountability is supposed to run in every direction. If Carroll lied under oath about who was paying for her case, and if a federal judge then shielded that lie from the jury, the integrity of those verdicts is not a settled question. It is an open one.
The same institutions that spent years insisting no one is above the law should welcome this investigation. Unless, of course, they only meant that rule for one side.
