The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old former magazine writer who accused Donald J. Trump of sexual assault, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.<\/p>\n
The investigation centers on whether Ms. Carroll committed perjury in civil lawsuits against Mr. Trump, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Ms. Carroll won a $5 million civil judgment against Mr. Trump that he had sexually abused and defamed her, which the president last November asked the Supreme Court<\/a> to overturn. She also won a $83.3 million civil judgment against him in another defamation case.<\/p>\n An inquiry into Ms. Carroll would represent the latest chapter in Mr. Trump\u2019s retribution campaign, which has been carried out by Justice Department officials. A number of figures who brought criminal and civil cases against Mr. Trump have come under the department\u2019s scrutiny, including James B. Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and other adversaries of the president.<\/p>\n Andrew S. Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, opened the inquiry into Ms. Carroll, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. The investigation was reported earlier by CNN.<\/p>\n Ms. Carroll\u2019s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, is said to have recused himself from the probe because of his prior representation of Mr. Trump, although officials from department headquarters have been involved in the inquiry.<\/p>\n The investigation comes at a volatile moment in a Justice Department that appears to be increasingly controlled by Mr. Trump, who has faced little pushback from department leadership as he accelerates his campaign of retribution against those who accused, challenged or defied him in the past.<\/p>\n Mr. Blanche has aggressively pursued investigations against people Mr. Trump has targeted. Last month, the department charged James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director<\/a>, over a social media post of seashells arranged in the numbers \u201c86 47,\u201d which prosecutors said was a threat against Mr. Trump. Mr. Comey has said he did not associate the phrase with violence and denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s revenge campaign kicked into high gear last September<\/a> when he publicly demanded that the then-attorney general, Pam Bondi, move to prosecute several of his adversaries. Within several weeks, a newly selected prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia had indicted Mr. Comey and Ms. James. But both of those cases were thrown out by a judge, and, despite the newer indictment of Mr. Comey last month, the department has struggled to gain traction in a number of cases against Mr. Trump\u2019s adversaries.<\/p>\n Ms. Carroll\u2019s accusations are among the most severe leveled against the president, and he has long sought to demean and discredit her.<\/p>\n In one area of contention before the first trial, Mr. Trump\u2019s lawyers wrote to the judge, accusing Ms. Carroll of concealing financial support<\/a> her case received from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a strong critic of Mr. Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n The lawyers said the eventual disclosure of the funding raised \u201csignificant questions\u201d about Ms. Carroll\u2019s credibility. Her lawyers, in their own letter to the court, argued that Mr. Hoffman\u2019s financial support was irrelevant to Ms. Carroll\u2019s legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding. <\/p>\n A spokeswoman for Mr. Hoffman did not respond Wednesday night to a request for comment.<\/p>\n In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll<\/a> in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. The jury also found that Mr. Trump had defamed her by saying on his social media site that her case was a hoax and a lie.<\/p>\n Ms. Carroll was awarded $5 million by the jury, a verdict upheld on appeal in December 2024<\/a>, a month before Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term, when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously rejected his request for a new trial. The panel said Mr. Trump had \u201cnot demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump won a delay this month in another defamation case in which Ms. Carroll was awarded $83.3 million<\/a> in January 2024 after another trial in Manhattan.<\/p>\n The verdict included $65 million in punitive damages after the jury found that Mr. Trump had acted with malice in defaming Ms. Carroll. Her lawyers argued to the jury that a large verdict was necessary to stop Mr. Trump from continuing his attacks on her, which he made at news conferences, in social media posts and during the trial itself.<\/p>\n