Trump ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $5.8m after failed appeal

The order comes three years after a jury found out Trump has sexually abused and defamed the writer.

A federal judge has ruled that writer E Jean Carroll can collect the more than $5.8m that US President Donald Trump was ordered to pay after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed her, clearing the way for the money to be released after the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

Judge Lewis A Kaplan ruled on Wednesday that Carroll can be paid the original $5m award granted to her by the jury, along with interest that has accrued since the verdict in 2023. Carroll’s lawyers had asked for the funds to be released after the Supreme Court refused on June 29 to hear Trump’s appeal.

“This is the end of the line,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in a court filing, adding, “It is time for him to pay Carroll.”

Less than an hour after the judge issued the order, Trump appealed it.

“The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement.

Carroll first accused Trump in 2019, writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. Trump denied the allegation, saying he had never met Carroll, accusing her of lying to sell books and for political reasons, and calling the claim a “hoax.”

Carroll sued him for defamation over those comments later that year, accusing him of damaging her reputation by suggesting she had lied for personal gain. She filed a second lawsuit in 2022, accusing Trump of battery/sexual abuse and defamation over another denial he posted on Truth Social in 2022, again calling the allegation a hoax.

In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her through his 2022 statements. It did not determine that Trump was liable for rape.

A second jury awarded her $83.3m in 2024 for the defamatory statements Trump made in 2019 when he was president, after she first went public with the allegation.

Trump has continued to fight both verdicts.

After the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, He called the lawsuit “a Fake Case” and pledged to continue fighting what he described as a “Weaponisation and Lawfare Case.”

On Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision not to hear the appeal. They argued that Trump would suffer “irreparable harm” if the money is paid out, because Carroll has said she intends to donate it, which would make it difficult to recover the funds if the verdict is later overturned.

Trump is also still appealing the $83.3m judgment, arguing his 2019 comments were made while he was president and are therefore protected by presidential immunity. The Department of Justice has also launched a criminal investigation into Carroll over whether she committed perjury during her testimony.