The U.S. attorney in Chicago has been tasked by the Justice Department with leading a criminal investigation into a Chicago-based nonprofit that helped fund some legal costs for E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who successfully sued President Donald Trump for sexual assault and defamation, a source with knowledge of the probe confirmed to the Chicago Tribune.

The investigation began earlier this year, and no criminal charges are imminent, the source said.

The focus of the probe has been spending by American Future Republic, a left-of-center tax-exempt organization founded in 2019 by billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, according to the source.

Among the issues that also have been looked at was funding for Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump, and whether she lied during a 2022 deposition when she said she’d received no outside financial assistance for her legal pursuits, the source said.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office had no comment Thursday. A Department of Justice spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on investigations.

Carroll’s attorney, Robbie Kaplan, also declined to comment through a law firm associate.

Hoffman could not be reached, nor could representatives of American Future Republic.

News of the politically charged investigation, which was first reported Wednesday by CNN, has emerged in the midst of a tough stretch for Boutros, who just last week dropped high-profile charges in the “Broadview Six” case against immigration protesters after a judge found “shocking” misconduct by a prosecutor before the grand jury.

While the investigation began well before the Broadview Six situation came to a head, Boutros’ involvement in a criminal probe targeting a longtime Trump target like Carroll is sure to spark a new wave of criticism for the city’s top federal prosecutor.

CNN reported on Wednesday night that Boutros was asked by DOJ specifically to look into whether Carroll committed perjury in a 2022 deposition in New York tied to her lawsuits against Trump, both of which ended in multi-million judgments against the president.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s longtime personal lawyers, is recused from the investigation because he represented Trump on the appeal of Carroll’s lawsuits, CNN reported.

Court records show Carroll said in the videotaped deposition she received no outside funding for her legal fight. Months later, however, Carroll’s attorneys disclosed to Trump’s legal team that she’d remembered “that at some point her counsel secured additional funding from a nonprofit organization to offset certain expenses and legal fees.”

That nonprofit was American Future Republic, a 501(c)(4) company headquartered at 191 N. Wacker Drive with a stated goal to “promote community welfare for charitable, educational or recreational purposes,” records show.

Meanwhile, the issue of Carroll’s truthfulness in her deposition was fully litigated during Carroll’s sexual assault case against Trump, court records show.

In upholding that unanimous verdict, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in 2024 the facts had shown Carroll’s case was taken on a contingency fee basis and that in September 2020, her counsel “received some outside funding to offset costs,” court records show.

“There was no evidence to suggest that Ms. Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder, received an invoice showing the arrangement before or after her counsel received the outside funding, or had discussed the arrangement with anyone” before her deposition, the 2nd Circuit ruling stated.

According to the Associated Press, Carroll has alleged a flirtatious, chance encounter with Trump in 1996 at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan ended violently. She said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her, the AP reported.

Trump has called the allegations a “made-up scam,” and he has attacked her motivations, saying they were politically driven or arose from a desire to promote her memoir, according to the AP

In addition to the $5 million judgment in 2023, the following year, another jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in a defamation case related to Trump’s social media posts about her.

The Justice Department’s investigation of the American Future Republic is the latest involving a person who brought criminal and civil cases against Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Boutros, a former federal prosecutor and Chicago white-collar attorney, was nominated by Trump for the U.S. attorney post in 2025. In his first year in office, Boutros has been forced to deal with multiple crises under the new Trump administration, including a hiring freeze, federal budget cuts, a lengthy government shutdown and a mass exodus of experienced prosecutors from the office.

But the biggest challenge during Boutros’ tenure has been Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s controversial immigration enforcement action that descended on the city last fall. The U.S. attorney’s office charged nearly three dozen people with crimes stemming from protests and other resistance to the actions of immigration agents, nearly all of which have fallen apart under scrutiny by the courts and the public.

Among the most high-profile of those cases to collapse was the Broadview Six, a group of protesters, most with ties to local Democratic politics, who were indicted in October on felony charges alleging they conspired to damage and impede an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s vehicle at a suburban ICE processing facility on Sept. 26.

The case was beset by controversy from the moment the indictment was brought as the defense alleged the charges were brought amid pressure from the Trump administration and was nothing more than an attempt to silence protesters of the president’s harsh immigration policies.

The case imploded last week after U.S. District Judge April Perry was given unredacted transcripts of the grand jury proceedings and held an emergency hearing where she said she had “never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

“Your sole goal is to do justice,” Perry told the team of prosecutors during a remarkable closed-door session on May 21, according to a transcript of that hearing later made public. “Your client is justice itself. I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”

An hour later, Boutros had just left a swearing-in ceremony for six new assistant U.S. attorneys when he made a rare appearance in court to personally apologize to the judge and announce he was dismissing all charges against the remaining four defendants in the case.

The widening controversy prompted Boutros this week to install “sweeping” internal reforms to the office’s grand jury practices, including “deep-dive” training from outside national experts.

But he also publicly and privately defended the merits of bringing the case, saying the evidence showed a crime was committed and that his team was fully prepared to go to trial this week on the misdemeanor counts of impeding a federal official.

In an all-office email sent after the case blew up in court, Boutros told his staff it was a “tough but important day” for the office, but doubled down on the defense of the case, calling the trial team of three prosecutors “courageous.”

“While I firmly believe that a crime was committed, this case was beset with a number of challenges,” Boutros wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Tribune. “But make no mistake, today was an important day for the Office. … These prosecutors fought for the rule of law and fought for the safety and security of our federal officials and employees—and, we thank them for that.”

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