DOJ opens criminal perjury investigation into Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll

In late May 2026 CNN reported, in an exclusive subsequently corroborated by CBS News and NBC News, that the U.S. Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into whether the writer E. Jean Carroll committed perjury. Carroll holds two civil judgments against Donald Trump — a 2023 jury verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation that awarded her $5 million, and a 2024 verdict awarding $83.3 million for defamation — both upheld on appeal. The reported perjury theory turns on a 2022 deposition in which Carroll, questioned by then-Trump attorney Alina Habba, said she received no outside funding for her lawsuit; her attorneys later disclosed that a nonprofit tied to LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman had helped cover some of her legal costs. The investigation is reportedly run out of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois and forms part of a broader criminal inquiry into the Hoffman trust said to encompass money laundering, obstruction and conspiracy. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who had represented Trump in related litigation, is recused.

The factual record around the probe is contested in a way that is itself part of the event. After CNN's report, Andrew Boutros, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, issued a public statement on May 29, 2026 asserting that his office "has not opened—and has never opened—a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll" and calling any contrary claim "categorically false"; CNN reported that its sources reaffirmed the existence of the investigation after Boutros's statement. The perjury theory had already been addressed in the underlying litigation: in upholding the verdicts in 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that Carroll had "plausibly represented" in her deposition that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding her counsel obtained. Legal commentators quoted in the coverage characterized a renewed criminal inquiry on the same theory as unusual.

The event is recorded under politicized-investigations — the opening of a criminal inquiry into a private individual who twice prevailed against the sitting president in court, reviving a theory an appeals panel had already rejected — and weaponizing-doj, which captures the institutional vehicle: federal prosecutorial resources directed at a presidential adversary. The Standing has a related precedent in the DOJ's restructured probe of former CIA Director John Brennan (entries/2026/05/08/federal-politicized-investigations-6c49dcb3.md). Per the originating issue's recorder caveat, the parallel money-laundering and obstruction inquiry into the Reid Hoffman trust is a distinct line of inquiry; if it matures into its own enforcement action it should be recorded as a separate event under the one-event-per-entry rule.