US prosecutor denies launching criminal investigation into E Jean Carroll

The top federal prosecutor in Chicago has denied media reports that his office opened an investigation into E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her 30 years ago.

Andrew Boutros, the US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, issued a statement saying his office "can confirm that it has not opened - and has never opened - a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll".

Multiple news outlets, including the BBC, reported on Thursday that the US Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into whether Carroll had committed perjury in connection with civil cases she brought against Trump, citing anonymous sources.

The BBC initially cited reporting from CBS, its US news partner, that said a source had confirmed that Carroll was the target of the criminal investigation.

However, CBS later said that source had clarified that Carroll's testimony regarding the funding of her civil lawsuits against President Trump was being examined as part of a related investigation into a nonprofit run by the co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman.

Carroll's lawyer declined to comment through a spokesman on Thursday.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist, accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, and successfully sued him in two cases.

Both judgements were upheld on appeal, but Trump - who has denied the accusations - has since asked the Supreme Court to overturn the first of them.

In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault.

He was also found liable for defamation for comments he made the previous year in a post on Truth Social.

In that post, he denied Carroll's claim that she had been attacked by him in the mid-1990s in a New York department store dressing room.

A second lawsuit in 2024 found Trump again liable for defamation in connection with comments he made about Carroll in 2019, in which he accused her of making up the claims against him to sell a book.

Trump has appealed to the US Supreme Court to overturn the first judgement, for which he was ordered to pay $5m (£3.7m) to Carroll.

He has also vowed to do the same with the other case, in which Carroll was awarded $83m.

It was revealed in legal papers first filed by Trump's lawyers in 2023 that Hoffman had helped to pay for some of Carroll's legal fees and expenses.

A year earlier, Carroll had said in a deposition that she received no outside funding for her civil lawsuit against Trump.

The issue was brought up during the case's appeal, and the court found that Carroll had "plausibly represented" in her deposition "that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained".

The "additional discovery... showed that Ms Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs," the US Court of Appeals for the Second District continued in a 2024 ruling.

The BBC has also approached Hoffman's non-profit for comment.

Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who personally represented Trump in the appeal cases against Carroll, is recused from the case, a source told CBS.

Since returning to office last year, Trump has repeatedly called on the justice department to prosecute a number of his perceived enemies.

The DoJ also recently created a $1.8bn fund to pay individuals deemed to have been unfairly investigated during the tenure of previous presidents.

But some members of Trump's own Republican Party have joined opposition Democrats in condemning the plan.

One of the chief concerns raised by critics is about potential compensation for individuals who assaulted Capitol Police officers on 6 January.