Judge says E. Jean Carroll can collect US$5mil damage award from Trump

Donald Trump has rejected the claims as a hoax and ‘con job’. (EPA Images pic)

NEW YORK: A US judge on Wednesday authorised the payment of a multimillion-dollar verdict to magazine writer E. Jean Carroll to satisfy a 2023 civil verdict in which a jury found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.

US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered the disbursement of nearly US$5.8 million to the former Elle magazine advice columnist, representing the original US$5 million verdict plus interest.

The funds had been held in escrow while Trump appealed the verdict, but the US Supreme Court on June 29 declined to take up the Republican president’s case. None of the nine justices, including three appointed by Trump, noted dissents.

Kaplan said the agreement establishing the escrow entitled Carroll to the money now, more than 6-1/2 years after she first sued Trump in November 2019.

“Defendant has been stalling this case for years,” the judge wrote. “It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgment.”

Trump asked the federal appeals court in Manhattan to put the disbursement on immediate hold while he appealed. The court denied his motion on Wednesday night. Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president’s next legal steps.

“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 spokesman for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement following Kaplan’s order.

In a filing opposing the appeal, Carroll’s lawyers called it Trump’s latest effort to drag out proceedings, file meritless appeals, and raise new defenses when old defenses fail.

“Defendant is out of time,” Carroll’s lawyers said. “Carroll has waited more than three years for a jury’s verdict to be paid. She should not have to wait any longer.”

Trump’s lawyers warn of ‘weaponisation’ of legal system

Trump’s lawyers had urged that Carroll wait to collect damages until after the Supreme Court reviewed the president’s renewed bid to overturn the verdict, which Trump filed on Wednesday.

They said letting Carroll recover, only to have the Supreme Court grant a rehearing, would “undermine public confidence in an orderly judicial process” at a time when Trump’s supporters and some critics, according to his lawyers, voice “concerns about politically motivated weaponisation of the legal system”.

Trump’s lawyers also said the president would be irreparably harmed if Carroll fulfilled her stated intention to give away the money, because once she did the money likely could not be recovered.

Kaplan said disbursing the funds would not cause irreparable harm, because Trump could sue to recover the money in the “highly unlikely” event the Supreme Court accepted his appeal and overturned the verdict.

Carroll’s lawyers, meanwhile, said their 82-year-old client intends to put the money in an interest-bearing account and use it to fund her retirement.

The Supreme Court rarely takes up appeals after initially turning them down.

Trump plans second appeal

Carroll accused Trump, 80, of raping her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.

Trump has rejected Carroll’s claims as a hoax and “con job”, denying he knew her and saying she made up the alleged rape to help sell her memoir.

Jurors awarded Carroll US$5 million based on a Trump denial in 2022, though they did not find that Trump raped her.

A different jury in January 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll US$83.3 million in damages based on his original denial in 2019, which occurred during his first White House term.

Trump has said he deserves presidential immunity for that denial.

Last September, the federal appeals court in Manhattan declined to throw out the US$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 for the US$5 million verdict.