Trump Launches ‘Unprecedented’ Effort To Claw Back the $5 Million He Has Already Paid to E. Jean Carroll

President Trump’s attempt to reclaim the $5 million he was ordered to pay advice columnist E. Jean Carroll is “unprecedented” and “substantively meritless,” say her attorneys. The bid relies on a longshot petition by the president to the Supreme Court.The money, imposed by a jury on Mr. Trump in 2023 after it found that he sexually abused and defamed Ms. Carroll, was paid to her on July 9 from a court-controlled escrow account. In 2024, a separate jury found Mr. Trump liable for further defamation and imposed a judgment of $83 million. He is set to appeal that one to the Nine.The effort to claw back the $5 million takes the form of an emergency injunction Mr. Trump filed on Wednesday to the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals. That tribunal has previously denied his request that it overturn both the $5 million and $83 million verdicts — a total liability that, with interest, now sits north of $100 million. Mr. Trump has called Ms. Carroll a “nut job,” “mentally sick,” and “not my type.” She alleges that he raped her in a Bergdorf-Goodman fitting room in the 1990s. The jury found him liable for sexual abuse, but not rape. Mr. Trump’ s request for an emergency injunction rests on the contention that his appeal to the Supreme Court has not been fully exhausted. In June, the justices denied his petition for a writ of certiorari, meaning that they declined to hear his appeal that the case was wrongly decided by both the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, as well as the Second Circuit. A denial of cert is usually the final act in any litigation and preserves the ruling that immediately precedes the Supreme Court’s declension of the case. The Supreme Court has held that an injunction pending appeal — of the kind that Mr. Trump is seeking — is an extraordinary remedy reserved for only “the most critical and exigent circumstances.” Ms. Carroll denies that the obligation to pay $5 million falls far short of that bar. Her attorneys write to Judge Kaplan that the “judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.” Mr. Trump, though, has filed an unusual “motion for reconsideration,” which asks the justices to take a second look at their decision to pass on his appeal. Such motions face an extraordinarily high bar to succeed. They must be granted by five justices, while regular petitions only require four. It is not enough for a litigant to disagree with the decision — he must show a glaring error of law or newly discovered evidence. The Supreme Court has not granted such a motion since 1965. Mr. Trump, though, wants the payment to Ms. Carroll paused until he receives word on his motion. The columnist’s team, though, contends that a previous stipulation in the case mandated that the transfer of funds be initiated the moment the cert petition was denied, not at the disposition of the motion for reconsideration. Ms. Carroll’s legal team, led by the lawyer Robbie Kaplan, notes that Mr. Trump “has lost before a jury, the district court, a unanimous Second Circuit panel, the full Second Circuit, en banc, and the Supreme Court of the United States.” Ms. Carroll accuses Mr. Trump of scheming to “re-write the plain language of the parties’ agreement.” Mr. Trump’s Hail Mary case for reconsideration rests on linking the $83 million verdict to the $5 million one that Ms. Carroll already has in hand. The 47th president argues that the evidence that underlies the larger judgement dates from when he was in office, and therefore ought to be protected by presidential immunity. The Supreme Court, though, held in Nixon v. Fitzgerald that a sitting president is immune for civil damages only for actions falling within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.Judge Kaplan has grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Trump’s attempts to avoid paying Ms. Carroll, writing earlier this month that the president “has been stalling this case for years. It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgment. ” Ms. Carroll’s attorneys write to the Second Circuit that their client is “82 years old and has waited a very long time to receive her award.” Mr. Trump, they allege, is “slow-rolling his defenses, asserting or inventing a new one each time his prior effort to delay the case fails.”

Trump Launches ‘Unprecedented’ Effort To Claw Back the $5 Million He Has Already Paid to E. Jean Carroll

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