Justice Department opens criminal probe into E. Jean Carroll testimony

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, targeting whether her testimony in the civil cases against Donald Trump crossed into perjury. The move puts one of the most closely watched defamation battles of Trump’s political career back in the spotlight and raises sharp questions about how far federal prosecutors should go when a private accuser has already prevailed in civil court.

The inquiry, launched in late May 2026, is being handled out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros is identified as the local prosecutor involved. The central issue is Carroll’s testimony in the lawsuits that followed her claim that Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.

That civil litigation produced two major jury awards. In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million. In January 2024, a separate jury awarded her $83.3 million in a second defamation case tied to Trump’s public denials and repeated attacks on her credibility. Appeals courts later upheld both verdicts, leaving the judgments in place and reinforcing the legal weight of Carroll’s claims.

The new probe is politically explosive because it cuts against the image of institutional neutrality at the Justice Department. Trump allies are likely to frame the investigation as overdue accountability if prosecutors believe Carroll gave false testimony. Critics are likely to see a different message: that a woman who won in civil court against a former president is now being pulled into a criminal inquiry over the very testimony that helped establish her case.

That tension matters beyond Carroll and Trump. High-profile sexual misconduct cases often hinge on credibility, timing and corroboration, and the prospect of a criminal perjury investigation could chill future accusers who fear that testifying against a powerful defendant may later expose them to federal scrutiny. It also deepens the sense that Trump’s second term has fused personal grievance, criminal enforcement and national politics into a single fight over who the justice system protects, and who it punishes.