DOJ probes Democratic-allied nonprofit that helped pay E. Jean Carroll’s legal bills

The Justice Department has launched a criminal probe into a Chicago-based nonprofit backed by billionaire Reid Hoffman over its payment of legal bills of E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department declined to comment, saying it does not discuss ongoing investigations but Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in a statement: “In light of widespread reporting and intense media and public interest into the E. Jean Carroll matter in New York, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office can confirm that it has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false.”

A person familiar with the matter initially told The Associated Press that investigators were focused on Carroll but later clarified that the actual focus was on a nonprofit that had helped fund her case.

The Chicago-based investigation, which is expected to look at statements Carroll made during a deposition, could also morph into a criminal perjury probe against the 82-year-old columnist, said the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe. The nascent investigation follows years of Trump publicly deriding Carroll, his accuser, and Hoffman, a major Democratic Party donor.

A representative for Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, declined to comment. An attorney for Carroll could not immediately be reached for comment.

The investigation stems from Carroll’s civil lawsuit against Trump, in which a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed her, delivering her a $5 million verdict. Carroll also won a second defamation trial against Trump, with the jury awarding her a $83.3 million civil judgment.

Trump, who denies the allegations, has so far been unsuccessful in his appeals of the verdicts.

In a 2022 deposition, Carroll testified that outside funders were not helping her to bring the lawsuit. It later became public that Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, had paid some of her legal bills.

The investigation is centered on this statement and whether American Future Republic, which largely gives grants to left-leaning causes, could have directed Carroll to lie during that deposition, according to the people familiar with the probe. The investigation is examining potential money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction charges, the people said.

Any conspiracy investigation probably would extend to Carroll.

The Justice Department declined to comment, saying it does not discuss ongoing investigations.

The probe marks the Justice Department’s latest attempt to wield its powers to investigate and embroil Trump’s foes in potentially costly legal investigations. Some investigations into these adversaries have done little more than garner headlines, with the efforts gaining little legal momentum within the Justice Department and the FBI. Others, including cases against former FBI director James B. Comey, have resulted in indictments. One case against him was dismissed after a judge determined that the U.S. attorney who brought the case was unlawfully appointed. A second indictment is also expected to face significant legal hurdles.

CNN first reported on the investigation tied to Carroll’s case. The investigation became public on the same day that the Supreme Court again postponed deciding whether it would take up Trump’s appeal of the $5 million verdict.

Trump’s personal defense attorneys have previously brought up Carroll’s statement during the deposition — and how the trial judge handled the evidence around the payment of her legal fees — as a potential reason to overturn the verdict.

But a panel of federal appeals judges ruled in 2024 that it was plausible that she had simply forgotten about the funding when she testified — and had not intended to mislead the defense. According to court records, Carroll’s legal team said they would be paid on contingency, meaning her attorneys would only get paid if and when she prevailed before a jury or reached a monetary settlement.

In 2020, her defense team informed her that they had secured outside funding for some legal fees, according to the court records. Carrol said that she did not speak with her counsel again about this until 2023, and that when she testified in 2022, she had forgotten about it, according to court records.

“There was no evidence to suggest that Ms. Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder, received an invoice showing the arrangement before or after her counsel received the outside funding, or had discussed the arrangement with anyone between learning of it in September 2020 and being deposed in October 2022,” the panel of appeals court judges found.

Todd Blanche, now the acting attorney general, was part of Trump’s legal team that brought the appeal of the Carroll verdict. He is recused from the investigation into the nonprofit, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

In May 2023, jurors determined that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape.

Trump’s public disdain for Carroll started soon after she first publicly alleged — in a 2019 magazine excerpt from her memoir — that he had sexually assaulted her decades earlier. Trump, who was president at the time of the accusation, called her a liar, claimed she was a complete stranger to him and suggested he could not have assaulted her because he found her unattractive.

Jurors in a different civil case concluded that Trump had defamed Carroll and owed her more than $83 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.