(Headline USA) The top federal prosecutor in Chicago denied Thursday evening that his office had opened an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the longtime advice columnist who has said Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store 30 years ago, hours after multiple news organizations reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether she had lied during the course of civil litigation against Trump.
The Associated Press and other news organizations, citing anonymous sources, reported that the federal prosecutors’ office in Chicago had opened an investigation into Carroll examining possible perjury allegations.
But Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, issued a statement roughly 24 hours after the first report was published saying that his office “has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.”
A lawyer for Carroll declined to comment through a spokesperson on Thursday.
The Justice Department investigation into Carroll was first reported by CNN on Wednesday evening.
Carroll, whose advice column ran in the women’s magazine Elle from 1993 to 2019, has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her, including former CBS President Les Moonves. Her bizarre social-media history also included posts making light of sexual trauma and even asking her followers if they found Trump sexually attractive. Trump was prevented from submitting that evidence in his trial.
A civil jury in Manhattan issued the $88.3 million award in 2024 following a trial that centered on Trump’s repeated social media attacks against Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996.
That award followed a separate trial, in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million. That award was upheld by an appeals court last December.
In a memoir, and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room.
Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.
A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape, as defined under New York law.
Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book.
He also said that Carroll was “not my type.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
