The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal of a $5 million civil judgment against him, ending his final opportunity to overturn a jury’s 2023 finding that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. The court gave no explanation for its decision, customary when it declines to hear a case.
The unanimous jury verdict awarded Carroll $5 million in damages for her claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her by calling her account a hoax. The jury rejected her claim of rape as defined by New York’s penal code, though it found Trump liable for sexual abuse.
Trump denied the allegations, and his lawyers argued that the trial judge improperly allowed jurors to hear evidence of past alleged sexual misconduct — including the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump was recorded saying he groped and kissed women. A federal appeals court upheld the verdict last year, prompting Trump’s petition to the Supreme Court.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the Supreme Court’s decision “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll.” She added: “His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. news partner, that “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.”
Trump has said Carroll was “not my type” and that she had fabricated the account. Carroll, a former magazine advice columnist, is now 81 years old.
MSI previously reported that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April rejected an en banc rehearing of a separate $83 million defamation verdict against Trump tied to the same allegations. That judgment remains under separate appeal, with Trump having secured a delay in payment while he seeks Supreme Court review.