E Jean Carroll, the New York journalist, asked a judge on Tuesday to mandate that Donald Trump pay her the $5.8 million she is owed from a jury verdict that found the US president liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.
Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Trump's Appeal
Lawyers for Carroll filed papers in a federal court in Manhattan one day after the US Supreme Court refused to hear Trump's appeal of the civil case verdict in 2023. The author and advice columnist argues in the filing that Trump is unjustly trying to delay releasing the funds, after he has made repeated challenges to the civil jury's decision.
The amount Carroll is due has grown to nearly $5.8 million with interest since the verdict. Her lawyers wrote that the court should require the sum to be disbursed by the Republican president. They argued that Trump has continued assailing Carroll, 82, and made further defamatory remarks while asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision, announced on Monday.
Trump's Reaction and Continued Attacks
Trump reacted to the court's decision by writing on Truth Social: "Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to 'review' a Fake Case brought against me." The jury reached its verdict in a trial that Trump did not attend after Carroll testified that she was sexually abused by Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of the midtown Manhattan luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman, after a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter turned violent.
Carroll first talked about the attack publicly in a magazine article in 2019, while Trump was president in his first term. He repeatedly insisted that he never knew Carroll and accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives. Trump promised on social media on Monday to keep fighting what he called a "Weaponization and Lawfare Case."
Carroll's Lawyers Demand Payment
Carroll's lawyers said Trump's legal team contacted them minutes after Trump responded to the Supreme Court's action on Monday, asking that the payout be delayed while the court is asked to reconsider its decision. But Carroll's lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, D Brandon Trice, and Maximilian T Crema, said in their court filing on Tuesday that there was no reason to delay the payment, especially since the Supreme Court expressed no division among its nine justices in their decision not to hear the case.
"To date, Carroll has agreed to each of defendant's many requests to delay the payment he owes her. Given the extraordinary lengths he has taken to avoid such payments and that each of those efforts has been denied in full, that cooperation ends today. It is time for him to pay Carroll," they wrote to the court on Tuesday. Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Additional Defamation Case
Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll from a separate Manhattan jury after a January 2024 trial at which Trump briefly testified. The Supreme Court's decision comes after a three-judge court panel at the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld the jury's verdict in 2024 and rejected Trump's arguments that the trial was unfair because the judge let jurors hear evidence of his alleged past sexual misconduct.
In 2025, Trump, who has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, asked the Supreme Court to review the case and overturn the verdict. Lawyers for Carroll asked the judges to reject the request.
