Multiple outlets reported on May 27-28, 2026, that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll — the writer who won $5 million in damages from a jury that found Trump sexually abused her in the mid-1990s, plus $83 million in a separate defamation case — over whether she committed perjury in a 2022 deposition. CNN broke the story; CBS, Time and other outlets reported it as well.
The perjury theory rests on a single answer in Carroll's 2022 deposition: she said no one else was paying her legal fees. It was later reported that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman had paid some of her legal fees and expenses. Carroll, 82, contested whether the question and her answer covered the kind of indirect support Hoffman provided.
The investigation is unusually configured. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is recused — he previously represented Trump personally on the Carroll appeals. The probe was referred by senior DOJ leadership to federal prosecutors in Chicago, far from the Manhattan and Southern District of New York offices that handled the original civil cases, and is overseen by officials in the deputy attorney general's office.
Trump is appealing the $5 million sexual-abuse judgment to the Supreme Court and has pledged to do the same with the $83 million defamation award. A reported federal inquiry into the funding of the lawsuits that won those judgments, handled by prosecutors far from the offices that know the case, fits the documented pattern of weaponizing federal prosecution against the president's named adversaries (see DOJ Weaponization Against Political Opponents, Comey Is Indicted a Second Time, Now for an Instagram Photo of Seashells Spelling '86 47', A Judge Throws Out the Comey and Letitia James Indictments Because Trump's Hand-Picked Prosecutor Was Unlawfully Appointed).
Correction (October 14, 2026): after this entry was first published, CBS News's source followed up to say “Carroll is not the target of the investigation, which is focused on funding that Hoffman's nonprofit, American Future Republic, provided to help cover some of her legal team's expenses,” and Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said his office “can confirm that it has not opened - and has never opened - a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.” The title, first key fact and severity have been revised: what remains documented is a reported inquiry into the funding of her lawsuits, resting on unnamed sources, which fits the rubric's contained-scope criterion for serious rather than severe.