Justice Department opens criminal probe of E Jean Carroll

The US Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into writer E Jean Carroll, according to the BBC, focusing on whether she committed perjury connected to the civil lawsuits she brought against President Donald Trump. The inquiry examines statements Carroll made in a 2022 deposition about receiving no outside funding for her litigation. Carroll previously won two civil cases against Trump, with judgments upheld on appeal.

The investigation sits on top of a legal record that is already unusually settled for a modern political scandal. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, and he was also found liable for defamation for comments made in a 2022 Truth Social post denying Carroll’s account of an assault in the mid-1990s in a New York department store dressing room. A second defamation case in 2024 resulted in an $83 million award after Trump accused her in 2019 of fabricating the claim to sell a book. Trump has denied the allegations and has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the first judgment.

The perjury question turns on money rather than the underlying facts of the assault claims. Legal papers filed by Trump’s lawyers in 2023 said Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, helped pay some of Carroll’s legal fees and expenses. The issue surfaced during the appeal, and the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in 2024 that Carroll had plausibly represented that she had forgotten about limited outside funding, adding that she was not involved in decisions about who funded her litigation costs.

The choice of venue adds another layer. The investigation is being led by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois, the BBC reports, even though the deposition took place in New York; Hoffman has a non-profit based in Chicago. Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche—who personally represented Trump in the appeal cases—is recused from the investigation.

The probe also lands amid a broader shift in how the department is being used and discussed. Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly called for prosecutions of adversaries, and the DOJ has recently created a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals deemed unfairly investigated during prior administrations—an initiative that has drawn condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats, including concerns it could benefit people involved in the January 6 riot.

Trump is asking the Supreme Court to erase the first civil judgment. The Justice Department is now asking whether a deposition answer about litigation funding should become a criminal case.