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US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered payment of nearly $5.8 million to the former Elle magazine consulting writer, representing an earlier $5 million judgment plus interest.
NEW YORK, USA – A US judge on Wednesday, July 8, approved a multi-million dollar judgment payment to newspaper reporter E. Jean Carroll to satisfy 2023 civil judgment where the jury found President Donald Trump liable to sexually abuse and defame him.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ordered nearly $5.8 million to be paid to the former Elle magazine advice columnist, representing an earlier judgment of $5 million plus interest.
The funds had been held in escrow while Trump appealed the decision, but United States Supreme Court on June 29 he refused to take the case of the Republican president. None of the nine justices, including three appointed by Trump, identified dissenters.
Kaplan said the escrow agreement provides Carroll with the money now, more than six years after he first sued Trump in November 2019.
“The defendant has been blocking this case for years,” the judge wrote. “The time has come for him to ‘do justice’ and pass judgment.”
Trump asked a federal appeals court in Manhattan to immediately halt the payments while he appeals. The court rejected his request on Wednesday night. Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president’s next legal actions.
“The American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to Witch Hunts, including the corrupt Democrat-sponsored Carroll Hoaxes,” a spokeswoman for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement following Kaplan’s order.
In filing a motion to oppose the appeal, Carroll’s attorneys called it the latest effort by Trump to throw out cases, file frivolous appeals, and add new defenses when old defenses fail.
“The defendant is out of time,” Carroll’s attorneys said. “Carroll has waited over three years for a court order to be paid. He shouldn’t wait any longer.”
Trump’s lawyers warn of the ‘weapon’ of the legal system
Trump’s lawyers had asked Carroll to wait to collect the damages until after the Supreme Court reviewed the president’s new request to overturn the ruling, which Trump filed on Wednesday.
They said letting Carroll recover, only to have the Supreme Court grant a retrial, would “undermine public confidence in the judicial process” at a time when Trump supporters and other critics, according to his lawyers, “concern about the politically motivated weaponization of the legal system.”
Trump’s lawyers also said the president would be irreparably harmed if Carroll followed through on his intention to release the money, because once he did the money could not be recovered.
Kaplan said releasing the money would not cause irreparable harm, because Trump could sue to get the money back in the “highly unlikely” event the Supreme Court accepted his appeal and overturned the decision.
Carroll’s attorneys, meanwhile, said their 82-year-old client intends to put the money into an interest-bearing account and use it to fund his retirement.
The Supreme Court rarely takes appeals after initially rejecting them.
Trump is planning a second appeal
Carroll accused Trump of raping her in 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan.
Trump has dismissed Carroll’s claims as lies and a “work of fraud,” denying he knew her and saying he made up the rape allegations to help sell her memoir.
Jurors awarded Carroll $5 million based on Trump’s denials in 2022, even though they did not find Trump raped her.
A separate court in January 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages based on his original denial in 2019, which occurred during his first term in the White House.
Trump has said he deserves presidential immunity for that denial.
Last September, a federal appeals court in Manhattan refused to throw out the $83.3 million judgment.
Trump plans to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, and his lawyers said a successful appeal could undermine the basis of the $5 million decision. – Rappler.com
