The federal prosecutor overseeing a criminal investigation related to E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine writer who accused Donald J. Trump of sexual assault, has presided over a Chicago office marked by high-profile prosecutorial failures and a deluge of staff resignations.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, Andrew S. Boutros, was appointed by the Trump administration as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois just over a year ago. On paper, his experience seemed suited to the role: a former federal prosecutor for the Northern District who had handled cases of drug trafficking, white-collar crimes and money laundering, followed by a period as a lawyer in private practice.<\/p>\n
Since taking on the job as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Mr. Boutros, 48, has pursued cases of financial fraud, firearm possession, robbery and threats of violence, while also diverting resources to prosecute cases that are more overtly political. He has emerged as a prosecutor closely aligned with Mr. Trump\u2019s agenda, apparently undeterred by repeated pushback from judges and juries in recent months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned that Andrew Boutros is willing to take down all of the credibility of the U.S. attorney\u2019s office to serve Donald Trump,\u201d said Christopher V. Parente, a former deputy chief in the Chicago office who has represented a defendant in a case Mr. Boutros\u2019s office brought against protesters of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in the Chicago area. <\/p>\n
Last week, Mr. Boutros was admonished by Judge April M. Perry in her courtroom after the judge found that prosecutors in his office had acted improperly before a grand jury.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour sole goal is to do justice,\u201d Judge Perry said. \u201cYour 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The charges in that case, whose defendants, including Mr. Parente\u2019s client, became known as the Broadview Six, were dismissed<\/a>. That ended one of the Trump administration\u2019s most highly publicized prosecutions of protesters during Operation Midway Blitz, the immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n Other cases tied to the crackdown have fizzled.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, prosecutors in Mr. Boutros\u2019s office accused a man of putting a bounty on the head of Greg Bovino, a former top Border Patrol official, but presented scant evidence at trial and withdrew assertions that the defendant, Juan Espinoza Martinez, was a high ranking gang member. A Chicago jury acquitted<\/a> Mr. Espinoza Martinez.<\/p>\n On several occasions, grand juries have rejected the office\u2019s attempts to bring charges, a once-rare rebuke that has grown more common in the Trump Justice Department.<\/p>\n In November, the office dropped<\/a> charges against two motorists who were accused of using their cars to \u201cassault, impede and interfere with the work of federal agents\u201d during Operation Midway Blitz.<\/p>\n The office has also seen so many high-level departures that Mr. Boutros sent out a letter to retirees last year. \u201cWe recognize that some of you have moved on and are not in a position to return,\u201d Mr. Boutros wrote, but added a link to a jobs portal for those who might consider returning. Veterans of the office have expressed dismay about what they see as a shift away from serious work toward more politically pointed prosecutions that appeared designed to please the Trump administration.<\/p>\n As reports emerged this week of an investigation into the funding behind E. Jean Carroll\u2019s lawsuits against President Trump<\/a>, Mr. Boutros said Thursday evening in a written statement that there was no criminal investigation into Ms. Carroll.<\/p>\n \u201cIn light of widespread reporting and intense media and public interest into the E. Jean Carroll matter in New York, the Chicago U.S. attorney\u2019s office can confirm that it has not opened \u2014 and has never opened \u2014 a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. Boutros did not respond to a request for an interview for this article.<\/p>\n The investigation involves donations made by a nonprofit founded by Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, to pay for Ms. Carroll\u2019s legal bills, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry.<\/p>\n As part of that inquiry, prosecutors are examining the veracity of her responses to questions about the donation during the civil proceedings over her accusations that Mr. Trump assaulted her decades ago. Mr. Hoffman\u2019s nonprofit, American Future Republic \u2014 and not Ms. Carroll \u2014 is currently the subject of the criminal inquiry, although that could change, a person with direct knowledge of the situation said. It was not immediately clear what, if any, illegal conduct might have occurred. Mr. Hoffman, in a social media post Friday, said \u201cthe premise of the investigation would be laughable if the subject matter weren\u2019t so serious.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Carroll won two separate but related civil judgments<\/a> \u2014 one for $5 million<\/a>, the other for $83.3 million<\/a> \u2014 against Mr. Trump, both stemming from her accusation that the president sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. It\u2019s likely that the Supreme Court will have the final word on both cases.<\/p>\n Veterans of the office said that the new inquiry tied to Ms. Carroll\u2019s lawsuits was highly unusual.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not the kind of case that the office takes for a half-dozen reasons,\u201d said Ronald S. Safer, the former head of the criminal division in the Chicago office who left in 1999 and now works as a defense lawyer.<\/p>\n He said that it was highly unusual for the federal prosecutor\u2019s office to take on a case involving possible perjury claims from a matter litigated in civil court. Given the number of civil cases, federal prosecutors would need to build \u201ca thousand new courthouses\u201d if they were going to begin searching for false statements in such cases.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, Mr. Safer said, \u201cit is clearly politically driven, and the Department of Justice, notwithstanding everything that has gone on for the past year plus, should be independent of politics and is not a vehicle to settle personal grievances of the president or anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Boutros, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, took the oath of office in April 2025. Though his appointment surprised some lawyers who had worked with him before, several said in interviews that they had hoped that he would steward an office known for its sophisticated investigations through a tumultuous period.<\/p>\n Seeking to shore up his office\u2019s flagging credibility, Mr. Boutros announced on Wednesday that there would be \u201csweeping internal reforms\u201d to the grand jury process, but offered few details about the changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal prosecutor overseeing a criminal investigation related to E. 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