OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:34 PM – Wednesday, May 27, 2026
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially launched a formal criminal investigation into 82-year-old author and former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The inquiry centers on whether Carroll committed perjury during testimony related to her two civil lawsuits against the president.
One suit alleged that now-President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and the second claims defamation, arguing that in 2019 he repeatedly “denied” the assault, said she was “not his type,” and asserted that she fabricated the allegation to promote book sales.
The move represents an escalation in a legal saga that has already spanned multiple years, shifting the battleground from multi-million dollar civil defamation verdicts into the realm of federal criminal law.
By advancing past standard appellate civil procedures to open a direct criminal investigation into Carroll, federal authorities are signaling a fresh legal strategy aimed at finally uncovering the full truth behind the allegations and ensuring accountability under federal criminal law.
During her sworn testimony in the 2023 civil trial, Carroll admitted under questioning that she could not remember the date, month, season, or even the definitive year of the alleged encounter at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, placing it broadly in “the mid-1990s” or “late 1995 or early 1996.”
While Trump’s defense team highlighted this lack of memory during opening and closing statements — arguing to the jury that an accusation completely devoid of a specific date, month, or season was impossible to verify or directly disprove — Carroll’s attorneys tried to argue that memory of “traumatic events” often retains vivid physical details while losing track of specific calendar dates.
Additionally, Carroll’s legal team presented no other evidence.
Meanwhile, representatives for the author have since condemned the investigation, describing it as a blatant weaponization of the federal justice system meant to retaliate against an alleged “victim” who held a powerful figure accountable in civil court.
The probe is expected to move forward as prosecutors begin issuing subpoenas and reviewing deposition transcripts to determine whether any actionable federal offenses occurred.
Past Lawsuits In Relation To Carroll
The prior defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos stems from a live television broadcast on March 10, 2024. During an interview on the program, “This Week,” Stephanopoulos repeatedly questioned Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) about her support for Trump, falsely asserting multiple times during the segment that a federal jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in the civil litigation brought by Carroll.
Trump promptly retaliated by filing a major federal defamation lawsuit in Miami, Florida, accusing Stephanopoulos of acting with actual malice and a reckless disregard for the truth by knowingly airing demonstrably false and damaging statements about his legal record.
Trump’s legal team argued that as a professional journalist, Stephanopoulos was legally and ethically obligated to report the literal courtroom verdict rather than replacing it with an interpretation on a live network news broadcast.
The high-stakes legal battle reached a definitive conclusion in December 2024, and ABC News and its parent company, the Walt Disney Company, agreed to a massive multimillion-dollar settlement. Under the terms of the agreement, ABC News agreed to pay a $15 million “charitable contribution” directly to a non-profit escrow account earmarked for Trump’s future presidential library foundation and museum.
The lefty network also agreed to pay an additional $1 million directly to Trump’s lead attorney to cover accumulated legal fees. In addition to the extensive financial payouts, the settlement mandated a public retraction and expression of remorse from the network.
ABC News appended a prominent editor’s note to the bottom of the online article accompanying the controversial broadcast, stating that ABC News and Stephanopoulos regretted the statements made regarding President Trump during the interview.
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