A reported Department of Justice criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll lasted barely a news cycle before the U.S. attorney allegedly behind it denied it ever existed. But the political damage was already done, and Senate Republicans now face a fresh round of pressure heading into June's budget reconciliation fight, forced once again to answer for DOJ actions that even some conservative voices find difficult to defend.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Andrew S. Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, had launched a criminal investigation into Carroll, the 82-year-old columnist who won two civil judgments totaling $88 million against President Trump. CNN added that the probe focused on whether Carroll committed perjury during a 2022 deposition when she said she had not received outside money to fund her lawsuits, as The Hill reported.
Then, Thursday evening, 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 denial raises its own questions. If the New York Times and CNN both reported a probe that never existed, the sourcing failures belong to those outlets. But the whiplash, investigation reported, investigation denied, political firestorm already burning, captures something real about the current state of DOJ credibility and the bind it creates for Senate Republicans who need to hold their caucus together on the budget.
Whatever the status of the investigation, the underlying factual question is not trivial. Carroll stated in a 2022 deposition that she had not received outside funding for her legal battles against Trump. But as Just The News reported, billionaire Reid Hoffman paid some of Carroll's legal fees and expenses, a fact that, if Carroll knew of it when she testified, could constitute a material misstatement under oath.
Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1996. She won a $5 million judgment in 2023 and an $83 million defamation judgment in 2024. The civil cases were high-profile and politically charged from the start, and the connection to Hoffman's funding added another layer of controversy.
National Review examined the broader Carroll-Hoffman entanglement, treating it as a case study in the kind of donor-funded litigation that conservatives have long criticized as lawfare. The question of whether Carroll's deposition testimony about outside money was truthful is a legitimate legal matter, one that, in ordinary circumstances, would warrant scrutiny regardless of who the plaintiff or defendant happened to be.
But these are not ordinary circumstances. And the DOJ's recent track record has made it nearly impossible for even sympathetic observers to take any new investigation of a Trump critic at face value.
The Carroll probe, real or not, arrives after a string of DOJ actions against figures who have publicly opposed the president. Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on two felony counts a few weeks ago over a social media post showing seashells arranged on a North Carolina beach. The government alleged the image contained a veiled reference to Trump as the 47th president. A federal judge, Cameron McGowan Currie, had already dismissed a prior Comey indictment, along with an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, in November, ruling that the U.S. attorney who brought those charges, Lindsey Halligan, had been improperly appointed.
Sen. Adam Schiff, who served as a prosecutor in Trump's 2021 Senate impeachment trial, was separately investigated by DOJ for possible mortgage fraud last year. The Washington Examiner confirmed the broader pattern of DOJ probes touching Trump's most prominent adversaries.
The accumulation has drawn criticism not just from Democrats but from voices firmly on the right. Ed Whelan, who holds the Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, called the Carroll investigation an "outrageous abuse of power" on social media. Jay Nordlinger, a former senior editor at National Review, labeled it "another impeachable offense" and "another grotesque abuse of power."
These are not progressive activists. They are establishment conservative intellectuals with long records of defending originalist jurisprudence and executive authority. When they break publicly with the administration on a law-enforcement matter, it signals something deeper than partisan disagreement.
Gregg Nunziata, a former Senate Republican counsel to the Judiciary Committee who now runs the Society for the Rule of Law, was blunt in his assessment:
"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 the specific nature of the target: "The idea that a successful plaintiff in a civil suit against the president would be a target for criminal investigation is remarkable."
The political problem for Senate Republicans is straightforward. They need to hold their caucus together for the budget reconciliation package coming to the floor in June. That package includes a title drafted by the Senate Judiciary Committee and a proposed $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund. Last week, Republican leadership punted on floor consideration of the bill specifically to avoid forcing members to defend that fund.
Now the Carroll story, regardless of whether the investigation actually exists, gives Democrats fresh ammunition. Senate Democrats are poised to force votes on amendments during the vote-a-rama, the procedural gauntlet that allows unlimited amendment votes during reconciliation debate. Sen. Chuck Schumer has not yet laid out his amendment strategy, but the Carroll investigation hands his caucus a ready-made messaging weapon.
The challenge for Democrats is the Byrd Rule, which limits what can pass through reconciliation to matters with a direct budgetary impact. Crafting an amendment that blocks a specific DOJ investigation while satisfying the Byrd Rule's requirements would be difficult. But the political point doesn't require the amendment to pass, it requires the vote to happen, putting Republican senators on the record.
That dynamic is familiar. Sen. Bill Cassidy's recent primary defeat already put Republican senators on notice about the cost of crossing the president. But defending a DOJ investigation that even conservative legal scholars call indefensible creates a different kind of political risk, one that cuts with general-election voters, not just primary voters.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has already shown 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. I can't find any evidence where '86' is used as a call for violence. It better be more than just the picture. There have to be facts and circumstances beyond that to convince me."
That kind of public skepticism from a sitting Republican senator, directed at his own administration's Justice Department, is not something party leaders want amplified during a high-stakes budget fight. Yet the Carroll story ensures it will be.
The Trump Justice Department's internal shake-ups have been a recurring theme, from personnel changes to shifted prosecutorial priorities. Some of those moves have earned conservative applause. But the line between reforming a politicized bureaucracy and creating a new form of politicization is one the administration has struggled to walk convincingly.
Democrats, predictably, are not interested in that distinction. Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, a Judiciary Committee member, declared: "The Department of Justice is focused on revenge, not justice. There's no question about it: This DOJ works on behalf of one man and one man alone, President Trump."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called the investigation "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." Coming from Schiff, who spent years promoting the Russia collusion narrative and oversaw some of the most aggressive congressional investigations of the Trump administration, the complaint about weaponization carries a certain irony. But irony doesn't neutralize the political problem.
The biggest open question is the simplest one: Does the investigation exist or not? Boutros's denial was categorical. If the New York Times and CNN got it wrong, that is a significant journalistic failure involving two of the country's largest news organizations. If the investigation exists in some other form, under a different office, or under a different name, Boutros's carefully worded denial may be technically true while functionally misleading.
No charges have been filed against Carroll. No arrest has been made. The 2022 deposition testimony and the Reid Hoffman funding question remain unresolved in the public record.
The question of whether Carroll lied under oath about outside funding is a fair one. Criminal probes into potential misconduct are a normal function of federal law enforcement. But "normal" requires a Justice Department that has earned the benefit of the doubt, and this one, after the Comey seashells indictment, the dismissed Letitia James charges, and the Schiff mortgage investigation, has spent that capital down to nothing.
Nunziata framed the core problem precisely:
"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 is not a defense. It is an admission dressed up as one. And it is the argument Senate Republicans will be asked to stand behind when the budget hits the floor next month.
If the DOJ wants to investigate perjury, it should investigate perjury, with evidence, proper jurisdiction, and prosecutors whose independence no reasonable person would question. Anything less doesn't look like justice. It looks like leverage. And Americans who lived through the last decade of institutional rot can tell the difference.