E. Jean Carroll won more than $88 million in civil judgments against Donald Trump — one for sexual abuse, one for defamation. Now the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Carroll herself, focused on whether she lied under oath during a 2022 deposition about who was paying her legal bills. No charges have been filed, and the probe is in its early stages. But the implications for the 82-year-old advice columnist are real.
What the Investigation Is Actually About
This is not a re-examination of whether Trump assaulted Carroll. The two jury verdicts that held Trump liable stand on their own and are currently in appeals. What investigators at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois are reviewing is narrower and, on the surface, more technical: during a videotaped deposition in 2022, Carroll said no one else was paying her legal fees. About six months later — shortly before trial — her lawyers disclosed that some of those costs had been covered through a nonprofit called American Future Republic, connected to Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic donor who has publicly said he backed Carroll’s case to level the playing field against a far wealthier opponent.
Carroll’s team has maintained she never directly met or communicated with Hoffman, and that the funding was indirect — routed through the nonprofit without her personal knowledge of the donor. The civil judge in that case largely limited Trump’s lawyers from using this issue to attack Carroll’s credibility at trial. Prosecutors now have to answer a harder question: was Carroll’s deposition statement an honest mistake, or a deliberate lie? Federal perjury requires proof of willful falsehood. That is a high bar, and cases like this rarely end in charges.
What Carroll Could Actually Face
The range of outcomes is wide. At one end: the investigation quietly closes with no indictment, which is the most common result in perjury probes tied to civil litigation, especially when the alleged false statement was eventually corrected before trial and the original judge didn’t treat it as a credibility-destroying revelation.
At the other end: federal perjury carries a maximum of five years in prison and fines up to $250,000. In practice, a first-time offender — particularly an 82-year-old with no criminal history — would far more likely face probation, home confinement, or a plea deal than actual prison time, even in a worst-case conviction scenario. Prosecutors would still have to prove she knew the statement was false when she made it, that she said it deliberately, and that the funding arrangement wasn’t simply information she didn’t have direct access to.
There are also indirect consequences regardless of whether charges come. The investigation adds ammunition to Trump’s ongoing appeals of the $88 million in judgments, though it does not automatically overturn them. It brings another round of legal fees, public scrutiny, and the grinding stress of being a federal investigation target at any age, let alone at 82. Worth noting: Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General who previously represented Trump personally, has recused himself from this matter. Critics see the probe as exactly what it looks like — a Trump-era DOJ going after a high-profile Trump accuser. Supporters call it legitimate accountability for sworn testimony.
The Political Weight Behind a Legal Process
Carroll became one of the most consequential figures in the legal reckoning of Trump’s personal conduct. The 2023 jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation; a second jury piled on $83.3 million more for his continued denials. For many, she is a symbol of a woman who fought back against an enormously powerful man and won in a court of law. This new investigation lands differently depending on where you stand politically — which is exactly why it’s generating the response it is.
What’s not in dispute is the timeline: Carroll said one thing in a deposition, her lawyers later disclosed something that appeared to contradict it, and now federal prosecutors are trying to figure out whether that discrepancy rises to the level of a crime. That process will likely take months, possibly longer. Whatever comes of it, Carroll is not the same person she was in 2019 when she first went public — and neither is the legal landscape around the man she accused.
- The full timeline of Trump’s civil liability verdicts
