The Department of Justice has reportedly opened a criminal perjury inquiry into E. Jean Carroll, the 82-year-old woman who won $88 million in civil judgments against President Trump, and the timing could not be worse for Senate Republicans trying to push a budget reconciliation bill across the finish line in June.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Andrew S. Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, opened the inquiry. Hours later, Boutros posted a flat denial on X:
"In light of wide-spread 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."
That contradiction, a major newspaper reporting one thing, the named prosecutor saying the opposite, sits at the center of a political fight that is about to consume the Senate floor. And it arrives at the worst possible moment for the GOP majority.
CNN reported that the investigation focuses on whether Carroll committed perjury during a 2022 deposition by claiming she had not received outside funding for her lawsuits against Trump. The Washington Times reported that LinkedIn co-founder and major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman funded Carroll's legal effort through his nonprofit, American Future Republic. Carroll testified under oath that she did not know Hoffman was paying her legal fees. She later said she "completely forgot he even existed."
Hoffman has been open about his political motivations. In August 2024, he said: "My primary motivation for participating in politics over the last eight years has been to oppose Donald Trump's ongoing attempts to break American democracy."
That a billionaire Democratic donor quietly bankrolled lawsuits that produced $88 million in judgments against a sitting president, and that the plaintiff may have concealed that arrangement under oath, is not a trivial matter. Perjury is a serious federal offense. If Carroll lied in a sworn deposition about who was funding her case, that is a legitimate subject of inquiry regardless of who occupies the White House.
Just The News reported that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recused himself from the matter because he previously helped represent Trump in the Carroll case. That recusal, whatever else one thinks of the probe, is the kind of conflict-of-interest guardrail that critics of the investigation have largely ignored.
The Carroll probe does not exist in isolation. It follows a string of DOJ actions against prominent Trump critics that have given Democrats a ready-made narrative about prosecutorial overreach.
A few weeks before the Carroll news broke, DOJ indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two felony counts related to a social media post showing a seashell image with the numbers "86 47", restaurant slang for getting rid of something, paired with Trump's presidential number. In November, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed indictments against both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on the grounds that Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who brought the charges, was improperly appointed.
Last year, the DOJ investigated Sen. Adam Schiff for possible mortgage fraud. The cases share a common thread: each target had publicly clashed with Trump.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have not been subtle about how they plan to use this. Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont said the DOJ "is focused on revenge, not justice" and "works on behalf of one man and one man alone, President Trump." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called the Carroll inquiry "more attempted retribution by the corrupt MAGA DOJ that is stocked with many of the same lawyers who got crushed by Carroll in court."
Schiff, himself a target of DOJ scrutiny, posted on social media that Trump "is using the power of the DOJ to go after his own victims," calling it "a vile attack on the rule of law and a disgusting insult to victims everywhere." That language is politically calculated, but it lands harder when the underlying facts, dismissed indictments, a prosecutor denying his own investigation exists, hand Democrats the receipts.
Senate Republicans last week delayed floor consideration of the budget reconciliation package. The bill includes a title drafted by the Senate Judiciary Committee and a $1.776 billion provision that Democrats have labeled an "anti-weaponization" fund. The creation of that fund has already drawn scrutiny, and now Democrats plan to weaponize the Carroll probe to make the vote even more uncomfortable.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing an amendment strategy for the reconciliation debate when the Senate reconvenes next week. He hasn't laid out specifics, but Democrats have vowed to force Republicans to vote on proposals they can frame as establishing a "slush fund" for allies of the administration who were prosecuted under the Biden-era DOJ.
The Byrd Rule, which limits reconciliation amendments to budget-related provisions, makes it difficult for Democrats to attach language directly blocking DOJ prosecutions. But the political damage doesn't require a successful amendment. It only requires a recorded vote that puts Republican senators on the record.
That is the real headache. Every Republican senator who votes to advance the reconciliation package will face attack ads tying them to the Carroll investigation, the Comey indictment, and the broader pattern. Every senator who breaks ranks hands Democrats a bipartisan talking point.
The most telling criticism has come not from the left but from the right. Ed Whelan, the distinguished senior fellow holding the Antonin Scalia Chair at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, called the Carroll investigation an "outrageous abuse of power." Jay Nordlinger, a former senior editor at National Review, called it "another impeachable offense" and "another grotesque abuse of power."
Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law and a former Senate Republican counsel, offered the most detailed conservative critique:
"Ordinarily I would hesitate to prejudge any DOJ criminal investigation, but this is now after a well-established pattern of the Justice Department launching specious criminal investigations and indictments against the president's critics. I think one could only assume that this investigation fits within this pattern, that this investigation reflects a Justice Department eager to punish people who have had the temerity to criticize the president or in any other way challenge his authority."
Nunziata went further, noting that "the idea that a successful plaintiff in a civil suit against the president would be a target for criminal investigation is remarkable." He also identified the weakest defense available to the administration:
"What the president is doing with the Justice Department in these prosecutions is completely indefensible, and his strongest defenders tend to say that the president is just doing to Democrats what Democrats did to him, which is, in other words, to implicitly say, 'This is wrong, we're just doing it, too.'"
That framing, "this is wrong, we're just doing it too", is not a defense. It's a concession. And it's the kind of concession that hands the opposition exactly the ammunition it needs.
Even Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has shown public discomfort with the DOJ's recent prosecutorial choices. Speaking about the Comey indictment on CNN's "State of the Union" earlier in May, Tillis said: "If this whole case is based on a picture in the sand of a North Carolina beach, it again makes no sense to me." He added: "I can't find any evidence where '86' is used as a call for violence. It better be more than just the picture."
When a Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee can't defend the DOJ's own indictments on national television, the political problem is not theoretical. It is already here. The longstanding debate over DOJ independence cuts both ways, and Republicans who spent years demanding that the department operate free of political influence cannot now shrug when the pattern looks uncomfortably familiar.
There are two separate questions here, and conflating them serves no one.
The first: Did E. Jean Carroll lie under oath about who funded her lawsuits? If a billionaire Democratic donor secretly bankrolled civil litigation against a president and the plaintiff concealed that fact in sworn testimony, that is a legitimate matter for investigation. Perjury corrodes the legal system. The recusal of acting Attorney General Blanche, who previously represented Trump in the Carroll case, suggests at least some awareness inside DOJ that the appearance of impartiality matters.
The second question is harder: Can this DOJ credibly investigate anyone connected to Trump's political opponents after the Comey indictment was thrown out by a federal judge, the James indictment was dismissed on the same grounds, and the Schiff investigation went nowhere? The pattern matters. Credibility is not a bottomless account.
Democrats have their own credibility problems on this front. The same party now howling about "weaponization" spent years using federal law enforcement apparatus to pursue Trump through investigations and prosecutions that his supporters view as equally political. The internal fractures within the Democratic caucus on questions of accountability and political strategy are real, even if the party presents a unified front on the Carroll matter.
But "they did it first" is not a governing philosophy. It is not a legal standard. And it will not help a single Republican senator explain to voters why the DOJ is investigating an 82-year-old woman who won a civil lawsuit while the budget reconciliation bill sits in limbo.
Senate Republicans face a June floor vote with a $1.776 billion line item that Democrats will frame as a payoff fund, a Carroll investigation the named prosecutor denies opening, and a string of collapsed indictments behind them. The occasional Democratic concession on Trump's policy wins will not shield the GOP from this particular fight.
No charges have been filed against Carroll. No court filings have been made public. The U.S. attorney whose name is on the reports says the investigation doesn't exist. And yet the political damage is already done.
If the DOJ has a real case, it should make it, clearly, publicly, and on the merits. If it doesn't, then every Republican who has to defend this probe on the campaign trail will learn the same lesson the hard way: prosecutorial credibility, once spent, is very expensive to earn back.