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Despite last-minute protests from lawyers for President Trump, a federal judge has ordered the court to release $5 million, plus interest, won by the writer E. Jean Carroll when a 2023 civil jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The money had been held in a court-controlled bank account for three years, and Mr. Trump said in recent filings he wanted it to remain there.
It is unclear when exactly the funds will be transferred. Mr. Trump’s lawyers immediately filed a notice of appeal, contesting the judge’s order. Mr. Trump sought an emergency stay of the order Wednesday, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit quickly rejected his request.
Carroll and her lawyers have been seeking the money in the days since the Supreme Court declined on June 29 to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal of the case, at the time seemingly putting the matter to rest. But Mr. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision, and in a filing Tuesday night, argued that the lower court federal judge who presided over the case should delay disbursing the money Carroll won until the Supreme Court again weighs in.
Carroll, for her part, has sought and been granted by the judge a faster-than-normal schedule to receive the $5 million in damages awarded to her by the jury, plus hundreds of thousands in interest compiled since the case was decided in 2023.
Her lawyer Roberta Kaplan has called Mr. Trump’s latest Supreme Court effort “gamesmanship,” while accusing the president of trying “to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying” Carroll.
In a memorandum explaining Wednesday’s decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that Mr. Trump “has been stalling this case for years” and concluded: “It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgement.”
The judge also noted how unusual it would be for the Supreme Court to revisit a matter it just rejected, saying successful applications for rehearing are “extremely rare birds.”
Mr. Trump vowed to fight paying Carroll soon after the unanimous federal jury concluded, in under three hours, that he more likely than not sexually abused Carroll by forcibly inserting his fingers into her during a 1990s encounter in a department store. Mr. Trump has emphatically denied her allegations since they were first raised in 2019.
His denials, which include claiming to have not known Carroll, saying Carroll is “not my type,” and calling her story a “hoax” and a “con,” are crucial to her defamation allegations.
In 2024, Carroll won a separate defamation trial against Mr. Trump, a case that also revolved around his repeated denials of having abused her. In that case, the jury awarded Carroll more than $83 million.
Mr. Trump has also asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on that case, and this week said in asking it to reconsider the decision on the $5 million 2023 trial, that he believes constitutional claims in the second matter will overlap with the first.
The arguments that the Supreme Court declined to hear in the $5 million matter revolved around whether the trial judge allowed inadmissible evidence. In the $83 million case, Mr. Trump is arguing that presidential immunity should have prevented the jury from being shown certain defamatory statements made during Mr. Trump’s first term in office.
The Supreme Court has not weighed in on Mr. Trump’s latest effort.
