Judge orders E. Jean Carroll be paid $5.8M in Trump sex abuse and defamation case; Trump appeals
NEW YORK (AP) — The writer E. Jean Carroll can collect $5.8 million held in escrow since a jury found that President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed her, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed but were denied an emergency order to block the payment from being made.
Trump deposited the money in an account shortly after a jury ruled against him in 2023. The U.S. Supreme Court recently let the civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to release the money. The initial $5 million award has grown with interest.
The jury found Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store, and defamed her after she described it publicly in a 2019 memoir, during his first term as president. Trump called her allegations false and said “ she’s not my type ” in an interview.
Trump’s lawyers said Wednesday they would continue to appeal and accused his political opponents of using the legal system against him. They argued in appellate papers that Kaplan’s decision shouldn't be allowed to take effect because Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision.
Late Wednesday, Judge Eunice C. Lee of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their request to stop the money from being transferred to Carroll.
“It is time for this case to come to an end,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a filing with the appellate court.
“Carroll has waited more than three years for a jury’s verdict to be paid,” they wrote. “She should not have to wait any longer.”
The jury had reached its verdict — in a trial that Trump did not attend — after Carroll testified that their flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the department store turned violent.
Trump insisted he never knew Carroll, now 82, a former advice columnist. He accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and of having political motives.
Carroll sued Trump after New York changed its laws to give sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to sue over attacks that happened in the distant past.
Trump “has been stalling this case for years,” Kaplan wrote in a memorandum detailing his decision. “It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgment.”
Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a 2024 trial where Trump briefly testified.
At that trial, Kaplan required the jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and only determine how much money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for comments he made about her while he was president.
Trump's lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from telling the jury that the encounter with Carroll never happened.
When the 2nd Circuit declined to let all of its judges rehear an appeal of the $83 million award, Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote that Trump had said multiple times over many years that Carroll lied for political and financial gain and had suggested she was too unattractive for Trump to have sexually assaulted her.
“As a result of Trump’s statements, Carroll was harassed and humiliated, subjected to death threats, and feared for her physical safety for years,” Chin said.
“And Trump showed no remorse, continuing his attacks against Carroll during and after two federal trials, and even proclaiming two days into the Carroll I trial that he would continue to defame her ‘a thousand times.’”
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