NEW YORK: A U.S. judge on Wednesday allowed a multimillion-dollar verdict payment to E magazine writer Jean Carroll to satisfy a 2023 civil verdict in which a jury found President Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming her.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered nearly $5.8 million to be paid to the former Elle magazine columnist, representing the original verdict of $5 million plus interest.
The funds remained frozen while Trump appealed the verdict, but the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 declined to take up the Republican president’s case. None of the nine justices, including three appointed by Trump, noted a dissent.
Trump appealed Kaplan’s order to the federal appeals court in Manhattan, less than an hour after the judge issued it.
“The American people stand with President Trump as he demands an immediate end to all witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded parody of the Carroll hoaxes,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement.
Carroll’s lawyers had no immediate comment.
Trump lawyers warn of ‘militarization’ of justice system
In a court filing late Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait to collect damages until the Supreme Court considers Trump’s new attempt to overturn the verdict.
The lawyers said Trump would suffer irreparable harm and face an “irrecoverable loss” if Carroll carried out her stated intention to give the money, because once she did, the money likely could not be recovered.
They also said allowing Carroll to recover, only to have the Supreme Court grant a new hearing, would “undermine public confidence in an orderly judicial process” at a time when Trump supporters and some critics, according to his lawyers, are expressing “concerns about a politically motivated militarization of the justice system.”
Trump filed a petition Wednesday with the Supreme Court to rehear his appeal. The Supreme Court rarely accepts appeals after initially rejecting them.
Trump plans second appeal
Carroll, 82, and Trump, 80, have been battling in court for nearly seven years, after Carroll first publicly accused the president of raping her around 1996 in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
Trump has dismissed Carroll’s allegations as a hoax and a “scam,” denying he knew her and saying she made up the alleged rape to help sell his memoir.
Jurors awarded Carroll $5 million based on a 2022 Trump denial, although they did not find that Trump raped her.
In January 2024, another jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages based on his initial refusal in 2019, which occurred during his first term in the White House.
Trump said he deserved presidential immunity for the refusal.
Last September, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan refused to overturn the $83.3 million verdict.
Trump plans to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, and his lawyers have said a successful appeal could undermine the basis of the $5 million verdict.
Carroll accused Trump of blocking both trials to avoid accountability.
