Trump’s New Strategy To Avoid Paying E. Jean Carroll $100 Million Emerges as His Supreme Court Appeal Takes Shape

President Trump has one appeal left — to the U.S. Supreme Court — if he hopes to avoid paying the sex and romance writer E. Jean Carroll the nearly $100 million that two juries have determined he owes her for sexual abuse and defamation. The upcoming petition is likely to lean heavily on the Westfall Act, formerly known as the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988. The statute, which transfers liability to the government, is designed to protect federal employees from lawsuits that arise from the performance of their official duties. If Mr. Trump can substitute the Department of Justice for himself as the defendant, Ms. Carroll’s chances of collecting the gargantuan judgement will be doomed. That’s because courts have long held that governments generally cannot be held liable for defamation. The Supreme Court held in New York Times v. Sullivan that “no court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place.”In 2023 a federal jury found Mr. Trump liable for $5 million for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room sometime in the 1990s and then for defaming her afterward. The next year, a second jury found him liable for a further $83 million for further defaming her. The interest on those two judgments has pushed the total sum close to $100 million. Mr. Trump’s obligation to pay, though, has been paused pending appeal.The president has appealed the initial $5 million verdict to the Nine, a petition that is pending. He is now set to do the same with the $83 million ruling following a refusal by the Second Circuit’s U.S. Court of Appeals to grant him a hearing by the full court. In 2025 a panel of that appellate tribunal rejected his appeal of the judgment on the basis of presidential immunity — and his argument that the penalty was excessive.The Second Circuit also rejected an early effort by Mr. Trump to swap himself out as the defendant. The Manhattan-based court, though, did grant his request to pause payment pending appeal because the “United States will petition for a writ of certiorari with respect to the Panel’s refusal to honor the United States’ Westfall Act certification and failure to substitute the United States as the party defendant in this matter.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote that “there is also a fair, in fact, strong, prospect that the Supreme Court will reverse the Panel’s Westfall Act decision.” The notion of leaning on the Westfall Act was mooted when Ms. Carroll first filed her suit in 2019. The then-attorney general, William Barr, declared that “The law is clear. It is done frequently. And the little tempest that is going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment.”Mr. Barr was correct that the Westfall Act is hardly a dead letter. It was invoked, to take just one instance, in 2013 to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over their actions in the Iraq War. Its application to Mr. Trump’s statements about Ms. Carroll is murkier, though, because the underlying events long-preceded his presidency. Mr. Trump’s previous effort to invoke the Westfall Act was not entirely bereft of support. Three riders on the Second Circuit backed his appeal, and would have convened the full court to consider his claims. One of those dissents came from Judge Steven Menashi, a former New York Sun editorial writer. He would have granted Mr. Trump’s appeal. Judge Menashi wrote that the president’s role in the constitutional scheme — the office is an entire branch of government unto himself — “should make it easier to determine that the President was acting within the scope of his office when the purportedly tortious conduct occurred: The President, compared to other government employees, has an especially broad scope of office.”Judge Menashi added that “in this case, the President made the allegedly defamatory statements when he issued a press release and responded to press inquiries from the White House. Making public statements to the press is part of the President’s job. The jurist noted that according to the Second Circuit’s majority, the “President of the United States has a much narrower scope of office than a government driver or doctor” — an illogical conclusion.

Trump’s New Strategy To Avoid Paying E. Jean Carroll $100 Million Emerges as His Supreme Court Appeal Takes Shape

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