A federal judge has cleared the way for veteran writer E. Jean Carroll to receive more than $5 million in damages, plus accrued interest, that sitting U.S. President Donald Trump was ordered to pay over a civil ruling finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The ruling brings an end to Trump’s latest bid to delay payment while he pursued a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a Wednesday order, Judge Lewis Kaplan — who oversaw the original 2023 civil trial — directed a court clerk to disburse the frozen funds, which Trump had deposited into a court-controlled account shortly after the initial jury verdict to satisfy the judgment during the appeals process. Trump had requested a hold on the $5.8 million total payment (which includes interest and additional costs) while he asked the Supreme Court to revisit its earlier decision to decline hearing his appeal of the case.
The origins of the case stretch back to the mid-1990s, when Carroll, now an 82-year-old former magazine columnist, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in Manhattan. Decades later, after Carroll went public with the accusation, Trump repeatedly denied the claim, and in a 2022 post on his Truth Social platform, he labeled the incident a complete hoax — a statement that formed the basis of Carroll’s defamation claim alongside her allegation of sexual assault.
In May 2023, a jury seated in a New York federal court unanimously found Trump liable on both counts, and awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Since the verdict, Trump has mounted a multi-stage appeals challenge, arguing that Kaplan improperly permitted the admission of prejudicial evidence that skewed the jury’s view of his case. Last year, a federal appeals court upheld the original jury verdict, ruling that Kaplan had not made any legal errors that would justify throwing out the ruling or ordering a new trial.
This is not the only defamation ruling Carroll has secured against the president. In a separate 2024 civil trial, a second jury found Trump liable for additional defamatory statements he made about Carroll, and awarded her nearly $84 million in additional damages. Trump also appealed that ruling, but a panel of federal judges rejected his challenge last year. The BBC has reached out to Trump’s legal team for a response to Wednesday’s order, and has not yet received comment. Kaplan has not specified a timeline for when the funds will formally be transferred to Carroll.