Three years after a U.S. civil court found former President Donald Trump legally liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, Carroll’s legal team has confirmed that the full awarded damages plus accrued interest, totaling more than $5.62 million, have been successfully transferred to Carroll.
In a brief public statement released Tuesday, Roberta Kaplan, lead counsel for Carroll, confirmed that the long-awaited payment aligned with the damages grant originally handed down by the jury. The resolution comes after a drawn-out series of appeals and efforts by Trump’s legal team to delay the disbursement, which concluded only after a court order forced the payout last week. A spokesperson for Trump’s legal camp declined to issue any on-the-record comment about the completed transfer.
The case at the center of the payment dates back to the mid-1990s, when Carroll, now an 82-year-old former magazine columnist, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her inside a fitting room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Years later, Carroll filed her civil suit after Trump issued a categorical denial of her claims on his Truth Social platform in 2022, which she argued amounted to defamation.
In 2023, a jury seated in New York reached a unanimous verdict upholding Carroll’s claims and ordered Trump to pay $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Immediately after the ruling, Trump deposited the awarded sum into a court-managed holding account, where it remained frozen through the multi-year appeals process.
Trump and his legal team have repeatedly denounced the entire proceedings as a politically motivated “hoax” and “witch hunt”, claiming the case was improperly financed by Democratic political opponents. They have also argued that presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan improperly allowed evidence that biased the jury against their client, creating unfair prejudice. These legal challenges were rejected repeatedly by higher courts: a federal appeals court upheld the jury’s original verdict last year, finding that Kaplan had not committed legal errors that would justify overturning the ruling or ordering a new trial. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Trump’s appeal, removing the final legal barrier to the release of funds to Carroll.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Carroll celebrated the outcome in a post on her Substack blog, writing: “WE WON!” and adding, “THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!”
This is not the only outstanding legal defeat for Trump related to his interactions with Carroll. In a separate 2024 defamation case brought by Carroll, a second jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll nearly $84 million in additional damages. Trump has appealed that ruling as well, but a panel of federal judges has already rejected his challenge to that verdict.