By Jonathan Stempel and Jack Queen
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday authorized the payment of a multi-million 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.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered the disbursement of nearly $5.8 million to the former Elle magazine columnist, representing the original $5 million verdict plus interest.
The funds had been held in escrow while Trump appealed the verdict, but the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 declined to take up the case.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Carroll had no immediate comment.
In a Tuesday night court filing, Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait until the Supreme Court reviews Trump’s renewed bid to overturn the verdict.
The lawyers said Trump would be irreparably harmed and face “unrecoverable loss” if Carroll fulfills her stated intention to give away the money, because once she does the money likely could not be recovered.
They also 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 weaponization of the legal system.”
Trump submitted a petition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to rehear his appeal. The Supreme Court rarely takes up appeals after initially turning them down.
Carroll, 82, and Trump, 80, have battled in court for nearly seven years, after the former Elle magazine advice columnist accused him 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 the $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 $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.
The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to throw out the $83.3 million verdict last September.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
Comments