Topline
The Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the past and has won an $83.3 million defamation judgment against him, according to multiple reports late on Wednesday.
Key Facts
The investigation, first reported by CNN, citing unnamed sources, is looking into whether Carroll committed perjury while testifying in her two civil lawsuits against Trump.
According to the New York Times, the probe has been launched by Trump appointee and U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew S. Boutros.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has reportedly recused himself from the case due to his previous work as the president’s personal attorney in the Carroll case.
The probe focuses on Carroll’s 2022 deposition, in which she said she received no outside funding for her civil suit against Trump, but court filings later showed that a Chicago non-profit linked to billionaire and Trump critic Reid Hoffman helped pay for some of Carroll’s expenses.
At the time of the trial, Trump’s lawyers had attacked Carroll and accused her of conspiring to “conceal the truth” about the funding, although the writer’s lawyers argued that the issue did not impact the merits of the case.
Key Background
In 2019, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s in an excerpt of her book, which was published by New York Magazine. She alleged that the sexual assault took place in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in midtown Manhattan. Trump quickly denied the allegation in an interview, saying, “She’s not my type…it never happened.” Carroll first filed a civil lawsuit against Trump in 2019, accusing him of defamation. In 2022, she filed a second civil lawsuit under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, accusing Trump of sexual abuse. The second suit went to trial first, in which the jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer and ordered him to pay her $5 million. In January 2024, a jury ruled in Carroll’s favor in the defamation case and ordered Trump to pay her $83.3 million in damages.
Tangent
The reported probe into Carroll comes amid growing criticism of the DOJ’s targeting of Trump’s political enemies and critics. Late last month, the department indicted former FBI Director James Comey, alleging that an Instagram post he made where seashells were used to spell out “86 47” on the beach were a threat against the president. Aside from criticism from Democrats, the suit has draw some pushback from GOP lawmakers and Trump’s allies like podcaster Joe Rogan. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said “I don’t even know if a first semester law student would judge this as having merit,” while Rogan dismissed the indictment as a “just silly.” In an interview with Stephen Colbert earlier this month, former President Barack Obama also called out the DOJ under Trump, without directly naming the president. Obama said there must be a push to codify the “basic norm” that the White House shouldn’t be able to direct the Attorney General to “go around prosecuting whoever the president wants prosecuted.” The former president then added that the Attorney General is considered the “people’s lawyer” and not the president’s “consigliere.”
