NEW YORK: A U.S. judge on Wednesday authorized the payment of a multimillion-dollar verdict to E magazine writer Jean Carroll to satisfy a 2023 civil verdict in which a jury found President Donald Trump responsible for sexually abusing and defaming her.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered the disbursement of nearly $5.8 million to the former Elle magazine advice columnist, representing the original verdict of $5 million plus interest.
The funds had been held in escrow while Trump appealed the verdict, but on June 29 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the Republican president’s case. None of the nine justices, including three appointed by Trump, noted disagreements.
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 Carroll hoax travesty,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement.
Carroll’s attorneys had no immediate comment.
Trump’s lawyers warn of “weaponization” of the judicial system
In a court filing Tuesday night, Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait to collect damages until the Supreme Court has reviewed Trump’s renewed attempt to overturn the verdict.
The lawyers said Trump would suffer irreparable harm and face “irrecoverable loss” if Carroll follows through on his stated intention to give away the money, because once he does, the money likely cannot be recovered.
They also said that letting Carroll recover, only for the Supreme Court to 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 the politically motivated weaponization of the legal system.”
Trump petitioned the Supreme Court on Wednesday to review his appeal. The Supreme Court rarely accepts appeals after initially rejecting them.
Trump plans second appeal
Carroll, 82, and Trump, 80, have battled 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 rejected Carroll’s claims as a hoax and a “scam,” denying he knew her and saying she made up the alleged rape to help sell her memoirs.
Jurors awarded Carroll $5 million based on a denial by Trump in 2022, although they did not find that Trump violated it.
In January 2024, a different jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages based on his original denial in 2019, which occurred during his first term in the White House.
Trump has said he deserves presidential immunity for that denial.
Last September, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan refused to throw out the $83.3 million verdict.
Trump plans to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, and his lawyers said a successful appeal could undermine the basis of the $5 million verdict.
Carroll has accused Trump of stalling both lawsuits to avoid accountability.
