A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that writer E. Jean Carroll is permitted to collect $5.8 million currently held in an escrow account. The funds were deposited by Donald Trump after a jury determined that the former president had sexually abused and defamed her. While the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed the 2023 civil verdict to stand, clearing the path for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to authorize the release of the money, Trump’s legal team immediately filed a request to block the payment pending their appeal.
The $5.8 million total represents the initial $5 million jury award plus accrued interest. In the original case, the jury concluded that Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 within the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store and subsequently defamed her in 2019 after she detailed the encounter in a memoir. During that period, Trump, who was serving his first term as president, publicly dismissed her allegations as false and remarked that she was “not my type.”
Trump, who did not attend the trial, consistently denied knowing the 82-year-old former advice columnist. He characterized her claims as politically motivated attempts to sell books. Carroll had pursued the litigation after New York state enacted laws providing sexual abuse survivors a renewed opportunity to sue for incidents occurring in the distant past.
Attorneys for the former president stated on Wednesday that they intend to continue their appeal and requested that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halt the payment. They have previously alleged that political opponents are utilizing the judicial system against him. Meanwhile, Trump is also separately appealing an $83 million defamation judgment awarded to Carroll by a different Manhattan jury in 2024, a trial where he provided brief testimony.
During that damages trial, Judge Kaplan mandated that the jury accept the findings of the previous jury, limiting their scope to determining the financial compensation owed for comments Trump made while in office. His defense team had expressed frustration that the court barred them from arguing that the encounter with Carroll never occurred.
In a recent decision declining a rehearing of the $83 million award, Circuit Judge Denny Chin noted that Trump had repeatedly claimed Carroll lied for financial and political gain. Judge Chin highlighted that these statements resulted in Carroll facing harassment, humiliation, and death threats. He further observed that Trump showed no remorse, continuing to attack Carroll throughout two federal trials and even declaring during the first trial that he would continue to defame her “a thousand times.”
E. Jean Carroll arrives at Manhattan federal court, Jan. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
