Justice Department Launches Criminal Investigation Into Trump Accuser E. Jean Carroll: What to Know

The Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine writer who won two civil lawsuits related to accusations of sexual abuse by Donald Trump.

CNN first reported on the launch of the new probe, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter, and said that it will focus on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony related to those lawsuits.

In 2023, Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages after a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her. In November 2025, Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the jury’s judgment, which concerned Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s, though the jury found Carroll did not prove Trump raped her. 

Then in 2024, another jury directed Trump to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019, when he denied her rape claim, and continued to speak against her on social media and in news conferences. Earlier this month, an appeals court agreed to a request made by the President’s legal team to defer the payment until the U.S. Supreme Court could review the case.

The new investigation may not result in charges being brought against Carroll, but it represents the Trump Administration’s latest attempt to use the judicial system to target political adversaries. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has reportedly been recused from the department probe, having worked as one of Trump’s personal attorneys on the Carroll appeals, a source told Reuters.

The New York Times reported that Andrew S. Boutros, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, whom Trump appointed last year, opened the probe, according to an unnamed source who knew the situation.

TIME did not immediately hear back from the Justice Department, or from Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer.

CNN reported that prosecutors are basing the investigation on Carroll’s 2022 deposition statement, where she claimed not to have received any outside funding for her suit. But billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a Democratic donor, was later revealed to have helped fund Carroll’s legal battle. Trump’s lawyers accused the writer of hiding Hoffman’s funding, but a federal judge barred jurors from hearing evidence about it, saying that the contributions had no bearing on Carroll’s allegations.

Since returning to the White House last year, Trump, through Administration officials, has targeted former FBI Director James Comey, former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D, Calif.), among others, in cases criticized by Democrats as politically motivated.