The Associated Press and other news organizations, citing anonymous sources, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago had launched an investigation.
WASHINGTON — Chicago’s top federal prosecutor denied Thursday night that his office has opened an investigation into the matter E. Jean CarrollThe longtime advice columnist has said Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store 30 years ago.
Hours earlier, multiple news organizations reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether she lied during a civil lawsuit against Trump.
The Associated Press and other news organizations, citing anonymous sources, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago had opened an investigation into Carroll to review possible perjury charges. But Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in a statement about 24 hours after the first report that his office “has not, and has never, opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.”
The conflicting accounts could not immediately be reconciled, and it was unclear whether Boutros denied that Carroll was a target of the Justice Department investigation or was not facing an investigation at all.
An unnamed source initially told The Associated Press on Thursday morning that investigators were focused on Carroll, but later clarified that the actual focus was on a nonprofit that funded her case.
Carroll’s attorney declined to comment Thursday through a spokesman.
CNN first reported on the Justice Department investigation into Carroll on Wednesday night.
The investigative report deepens the perception among Democrats and other former officials that the Justice Department, which is supposed to make prosecutorial decisions independently of the White House, is being weaponized against the president’s political opponents.
Trump’s Justice Department has launched multiple investigations into the Republican president’s perceived opponents, including ensuring indictment against former FBI Director James Comey last month.
Carroll said he had a casual dalliance with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 1996 that ended violently. She said Trump pushed her against a dressing room wall, took off her tights and forced himself on top of her. Trump called the accusations a “fabricated hoax” and attacked her motives, saying they were politically driven or motivated by a desire to promote her memoir.
2023 Jury Trump found responsible She was awarded $5 million in damages for sexually abusing Carol and defaming her. The following year, another jury awarded Carol Defamation case awarded $83.3 million in relation to Trump’s social media posts about her.
Reports this week said the Justice Department was reviewing a statement Carroll made during the civil suit that no one else was paying her attorney fees. It later became public that a Chicago group backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman funded Carroll’s case.
Trump’s lawyers in the civil case accused Carroll of withholding the information, which they said raised questions about whether the case was politically motivated.
Several news organizations, including The Washington Post and NBC News, reported Thursday that the investigation was actually targeting Huffman’s nonprofit, citing unnamed sources. The AP could not immediately confirm the accounts.
A month before the first trial in 2023, then-Trump lawyer Alina Habba sought to delay the trial, saying in court filings that new revelations about Huffman’s partial funding of Carroll’s case “raise significant questions about the plaintiff’s credibility and her motivations for commencing and/or continuing the immediate litigation.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision on December 30, 2024, upholding the $5 million jury award from 2023. Courts raised questions about Carroll’s credibility after Trump accused her of lying during a deposition about the sources of funding for his case.
The court cited Carroll’s explanation that she had forgotten about the “limited outside funding” she had received in September 2020 when questions about Huffman’s donation were first raised with her in 2022.
“This demonstrates that Ms Carroll had no involvement at all in the question of who was funding her legal costs,” the Court of Appeal said.
Huffman defended the financial aid, posting on social media, “Supporting women fighting for progress and justice in philanthropy, politics, and business has been a long-standing priority of mine, as has supporting America against the threats of Trump.”
A court record earlier this month said Trump does not have to pay damages until the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to review the case or reject the appeal.
The appeals court granted a request from one of Trump’s lawyers to allow Trump to late payment Despite requests from Carroll’s attorneys, he was ordered to post a $7.4 million bond to cover any additional interest charges.
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