Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Latest Bid to Overturn $5M E. Jean Carroll Verdict

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump another legal defeat Monday, rejecting his latest effort to overturn a 2023 verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and later defaming her.

Trump’s attorneys had asked the nation’s highest court to withdraw its previous refusal to hear his appeal of the $5 million civil verdict. That request was rejected Monday, according to the Associated Press.

The Supreme Court initially declined in June to hear Trump’s appeal seeking to overturn the verdict.

Following that decision, Trump unloaded on Truth Social, arguing the case was not simply about him but was an attack on the country and the presidency.
“This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!” Trump wrote.

Trump also blasted New York over the law that allowed Carroll’s case to move forward decades after the alleged encounter.
“New York State created a Law, for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully ‘nab’ me,” Trump wrote. “It was tailormade, and this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!”

The president has spent years fiercely denying Carroll’s allegations.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in 1996.
Trump has maintained that the encounter never happened and has claimed that he and Carroll never met. However, a photograph shows Trump and Carroll speaking with one another at a party.

The $5 million verdict is not the only major financial judgment Trump faces stemming from his battle with Carroll.

Separately, Trump remains on the hook for an $83.3 million defamation verdict resulting from his repeated attacks against Carroll after she accused him of assaulting her.

Those attacks included statements Trump made on social media.

During that case, Carroll’s attorneys urged the jury to impose “a large award” against Trump in an effort to stop him from continuing his attacks against her.
That $83.3 million defamation judgment has also been upheld by an appeals court.

Trump’s latest Supreme Court effort focused on the separate $5 million civil verdict, with his lawyers asking the justices to reconsider their earlier decision declining to take up his appeal.

But the court refused again Monday, leaving its previous rejection in place and dealing another setback to Trump’s effort to wipe away the 2023 verdict.
The president, meanwhile, has continued to reject Carroll’s accusations and has characterized the legal proceedings as an injustice that should never have been permitted to happen to a president or presidential candidate.