U.S. attorney denies opening criminal probe into E. Jean Carroll

Andrew S. Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Chicago, denied that his office had opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, pushing back on a report that placed one of the country’s most politically sensitive civil fightback cases inside the Northern District of Illinois.

Boutros leads the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, the chief federal law-enforcement office for a district of about nine million people across 18 counties. The office has more than 300 employees, including roughly 145 assistant U.S. attorneys in Chicago and Rockford, and Boutros took the oath of office on April 7, 2025 after a 120-day appointment by Attorney General Pamela Bondi. The U.S. District Court in Chicago later approved him permanently on July 24, 2025, giving him formal control over an office with broad federal prosecutorial power.

That authority has drawn attention because the reported inquiry centers not on Carroll’s assault allegations against Donald Trump, but on whether Carroll committed perjury in a 2022 deposition when she said she had not received outside funding for her lawsuit. Later reporting said billionaire Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, helped cover some of her legal expenses through a nonprofit. Carroll is 82.

The legal backdrop is unusually charged. A New York jury found Trump liable in 2023 for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. A second jury in 2024 awarded her $83.3 million in a separate defamation case, and a federal appeals court upheld that judgment in 2025. Trump’s legal team has continued pressing the fight, asking the Supreme Court in 2025 to overturn the $5 million verdict and separately seeking this month to delay payment of the $83.3 million award while the high court considers the case.

The Justice Department’s handling of any inquiry is complicated by personnel ties. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is reportedly recused because he previously represented Trump in the Carroll litigation, leaving Boutros in a highly visible position if the matter is being handled out of Chicago. CBS News reported that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into a nonprofit run by Hoffman that funded part of Carroll’s civil case, and said the probe was being led out of Boutros’s office.

Boutros later said his office had not opened, and had never opened, a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, calling the claims “categorically false.” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment. The dispute now highlights the institutional stakes around how federal prosecutors handle politically sensitive matters tied to high-profile sexual misconduct litigation and the appearance of using law enforcement power in a fight long defined by Trump’s personal and legal interests.