By Aaron Miller-
The US Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump’s second attempt to overturn a jury verdict holding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, bringing the first of two major judgments in her long-running legal battle with the president closer to finality.
The justices declined on Monday to reconsider their earlier decision not to hear Trump’s challenge to the verdict, dealing another setback to the president’s efforts to claw back more than $5.6 million already paid to Carroll. The decision means the jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll and subsequently defamed her cannot be challenged through another appeal in the federal courts.
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Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan of Kaplan Martin LLP, welcomed the decision, saying the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case again meant that the jury’s unanimous verdict was now final. “We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has declined again to hear this case,” Kaplan said in a statement. “As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court.”
The ruling follows a series of legal manoeuvres by Trump’s lawyers aimed at preventing Carroll from retaining money awarded to her in the original case. More than $5.6 million was transferred to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account in July after a federal judge ordered the payment to proceed following the Supreme Court’s earlier refusal to hear Trump’s appeal. Carroll ultimately received $5,625,005.48.
Trump’s legal team subsequently sought an injunction requiring Carroll to return the money while the president pursued another attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to reconsider his case. His lawyers argued that allowing Carroll to retain the award before the court had fully resolved his latest petition could expose Trump to an “unrecoverable loss” and cause him irreparable harm.
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Carroll’s lawyers rejected that argument, maintaining that Trump had exhausted his available avenues of appeal and was attempting to delay enforcement of a judgment that had already survived repeated challenges. In court filings, they argued that Trump had lost before a jury, in the district court, before a unanimous panel of the Second Circuit and before the full appeals court sitting en banc, before ultimately being turned away by the Supreme Court.
They also pointed to a previous agreement under which Carroll could collect the judgment once the Supreme Court denied Trump’s petition. That condition was met when the justices declined to hear the case, they argued, making further efforts to delay payment unjustified.
The legal battle stems from Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her inside a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. In the first of two major trials, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. Trump has consistently denied the allegations and has described Carroll’s claims as false.
The second case resulted in an even larger financial penalty. A separate jury in 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83 million in additional defamation damages after finding that his repeated public statements attacking her and denying her allegations were defamatory. Trump has continued to challenge that judgement, meaning a separate Supreme Court battle remains unresolved.
The administration has also become directly involved in that second case. The Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court to consider Trump’s arguments concerning presidential immunity and to prevent Carroll from collecting the additional $83 million award. In an extraordinary legal move, Trump has sought to replace himself as the defendant with the US government as he argues that he should be protected from liability for statements made while he was president.
A Justice Department filing argued that there was “good cause” to pause the proceedings so the administration could advance Trump’s immunity arguments on his behalf. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear that appeal.
Trump, meanwhile, vowed to continue fighting the Carroll litigation after the Supreme Court rejected his initial appeal in June. Writing on Truth Social at the time, he called the case a “Fake Case” and repeated his claim that he had never met Carroll, while accusing her legal action of being part of what he described as the “weaponization” of the justice system.
Monday’s decision nevertheless closes another avenue in the first Carroll case. While the separate $83 million defamation judgement remains before the Supreme Court, Trump’s latest attempt to prevent Carroll from keeping the $5.6 million awarded in the original verdict has now been rejected, marking another decisive setback in a seven-year legal battle that has followed the former Elle writer’s allegations against the president.
Image: AP News
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