E. Jean Carroll Suffers Setback in Her Quest To Collect $83 Million From Trump — but Final Word Belongs to Supreme Court

The pausing by an appellate court of an $83 million judgment owed by President Trump to the sex and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll means that all eyes will swivel to the Supreme Court for a final word on the dramatic defamation case. The Second United States Appeals Circuit granted Mr. Trump’s motion to pause payment of that sum. The president had asked for the hold on his obligation to pay after the appellate tribunal denied Mr. Trump a chance to challenge the defamation award before the full appeals court in what is called an en banc hearing. The $83 million judgment was imposed by a jury in 2024 pursuant to a finding that Mr. Trump had defamed Ms. Carroll.That sum followed an earlier jury judgment of $5 million, awarded to Ms. Carroll following a finding that Mr. Trump sexually abused her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room sometime in the 1990s. Ms. Carroll sued under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allows such lawsuits after the normal statute of limitations expires. Mr. Trump denied those allegations, calling them a “hoax.” The jury, though, did not find that Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll.Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over both the $5 million and $83 million trials, did not allow Mr. Trump to contest the underlying facts that were established in the first one. The further $83 million was awarded after Mr. Trump called Ms. Carroll a “whack job” and a “liar.” He also insisted that she is “not my type,” a phrase that Ms. Carroll adopted as the title of her bestselling memoir.Judge Kaplan rejected the idea that Ms. Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”Mr. Trump has already appealed the original $5 million verdict to the Supreme Court, which has not yet indicated whether it will take the case. Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, spun the pause on payment as a victory for her client, declaring in a statement that “We are pleased that the Second Circuit conditioned the stay on President Trump posting a bond of nearly $100 million — increasing the $91,630,000 bond he originally posted by another $7,462,492.74 to account for the accruing post-judgment interest.” One strategy that Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to argue to the Second Circuit— and which he could reprise at his high court appeal — is to swap himself out as the defendant in favor of the Department of Justice. That would effectively end the case as the government cannot be sued for defamation. Mr. Trump is also likely to argue that the penalty imposed is so large as to violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “excessive fines.”That proved a winning argument in another civil case — the $500 million fraud verdict secured by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against Mr. Trump, his two adult sons, and their family business. New York’s intermediate appellate court struck down that sum as unconstitutional. The court, though, preserved the underlying finding of civil fraud. Both Ms. James and Mr. Trump have appealed that split decision to New York’s highest court.Mr. Trump will likely also argue to the Nine that he enjoys “absolute immunity” for comments he made about Ms. Carroll while he was president. The Supreme Court held in Trump v. United States, from 2024, that presidents enjoy presumptive immunity for official acts, but are bereft of such protections for unofficial acts. Mr. Trump is also challenging his convictions in the Stormy Daniels hush money case on the basis of immunity.Three judges of the Second Circuit would have granted Mr. Trump’s request for an en banc hearing. Most heated on this point was a former Sun editorial writer, Judge Steven Menashi, who wrote in dissent that the “grossly excessive punitive damages award” — the $83 million owed to Ms. Carroll — “should have been remitted.” He concludes that “these proceedings represent a manifest miscarriage of justice.”For the Supreme Court to elect to take up a case, four justices must express interest in doing so. Mr. Trump’s appeal of the initial $5 million verdict initially appeared on the high court’s conference schedule — the sessions where the justices decide which cases to take — before disappearing. If the Supreme Court elects to take the case, it will likely consolidate both the Carroll litigations.

E. Jean Carroll Suffers Setback in Her Quest To Collect $83 Million From Trump — but Final Word Belongs to Supreme Court

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