The top federal prosecutor in Chicago flatly denied Thursday that his office had ever opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll — roughly 24 hours after multiple news organizations reported the Justice Department had launched one — while subsequent reporting clarified that the probe’s primary target is not Carroll but a nonprofit backed by Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.
Andrew S. Boutros, US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, issued a statement saying his office “has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Any claim to the contrary is categorically false.”
The denial came after CNN first reported Wednesday that the DOJ had launched a criminal probe into Carroll over potential perjury in her 2022 videotaped deposition — specifically, whether she lied under oath when she answered “no” after being asked directly whether anyone outside her legal team was funding her lawsuits against President Donald Trump.
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Read: DOJ Opens Criminal Probe Into E. Jean Carroll Over Alleged Perjury in Trump Lawsuits
The AP and other outlets followed with similar reports citing anonymous sources. The AP later acknowledged that a source had initially described Carroll as the focus before walking that back, saying the actual target was the nonprofit. CNN updated its original story to add Boutros’s denial.
American Future Republic
Axios reported that the investigation centers more on Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, than on Carroll herself. NBC News confirmed that investigators are examining possible money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy charges against the trust Hoffman founded, while also looking at a potential perjury charge tied to Carroll’s deposition — though that is not the primary focus.
Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democratic donors, has been an outspoken critic of Trump.
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The Washington Post reported that American Future Republic, a Chicago-based nonprofit, paid $7 million to Carroll’s law firm, Kaplan Hecker & Fink, in 2020 — initially as a grant for a separate public interest case. Hoffman’s philanthropic adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn told the Times in 2023 that Hoffman had no knowledge that the funds would ultimately support the Carroll litigation.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, later asked whether the grant could be redirected to cover Carroll’s case against Trump, and Hoffman agreed.
Carroll had answered “no” in her October 2022 deposition when asked directly whether anyone else was paying her legal fees. Her lawyers disclosed the Hoffman funding to Trump’s legal team in April 2023, just before trial, saying Carroll “now recalls that at some point her counsel secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to offset certain expenses and legal fees.”
Asked about the discrepancy on a CNN panel in May 2023, Carroll said, “I just completely forgot. I just completely forgot he even existed.”
A Manhattan jury found in May 2023 that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, awarding her $5 million in damages. A second jury ordered Trump in January 2024 to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million for defamation. Trump has denied knowing Carroll and has appealed both verdicts; the Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear the case.
Boutros, a Trump appointee who has led the Northern District of Illinois since 2025, drew scrutiny earlier this year over the collapse of his office’s prosecution of protesters arrested outside an immigration detention center — a case that critics also called politically motivated.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department has separately pursued criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — both longtime targets of the president’s public criticism. The Carroll-Hoffman probe extends that record. The Justice Department declined to comment, citing its policy of not discussing ongoing investigations.
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