US justice department launches criminal investigation into Trump accuser E Jean Carroll, reports say

The new criminal case is looking into whether Carroll lied when she said in a 2022 deposition that she received no outside funding for her civil lawsuit against Trump, a source told CBS.It was revealed in legal papers first filed by Trump's lawyers in 2023 that the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, had helped to pay for some of Carroll's legal fees and expenses.The issue was brought up during the case's appeal, and the court found that Carroll had "plausibly represented" in her deposition "that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained".The "additional discovery... showed that Ms Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs," the US Court of Appeals for the Second District continued in a 2024 ruling.The new investigation is being led by the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, one source told CBS. CNN, which first reported the story, reported that while Carroll's deposition took place in New York, one of the individuals who helped cover some of Carroll's legal fees, Hoffman, has a non-profit organisation based in Chicago.The BBC has also approached Hoffman's non-profit for comment.Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who personally represented Trump in the appeal cases against Carroll, is recused from the case, a source told CBS.