The Supreme Court Slams the Door on Trump’s Appeal, Forcing the $5 Million Payout in the E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case
End of the road.
The Supreme Court just shut the door on Donald Trump’s latest attempt to dodge the $5 million payout he owes writer E. Jean Carroll. According to NBC News, the justices refused to hear Trump’s appeal, leaving the 2023 jury verdict fully intact. That means the finding that he sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and later defamed her when she went public is now as final as it gets.
This isn’t just a legal loss for Trump. It’s the end of the road for his appeals in this particular case. The Supreme Court’s decision means there are no more direct challenges left in the federal court system. The $5 million judgment stands, and Carroll’s team is already calling it a definitive win.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said, “Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll,” she said. “His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
The President, of course, isn’t taking this lying down
His legal team quickly fired back. “The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” the spokesman said. It’s the kind of language you’d expect from a political playbook, not a legal filing.
The case itself stems from a federal lawsuit Carroll filed in New York City, where she accused Trump of assaulting her in a department store dressing room back in 1996. The defamation claims came later, after Trump dismissed her allegations as a “con job” and a “hoax” during his first term in office. Carroll first went public with her story in 2019, and she sued for defamation that same year after Trump called her a liar who was just trying to cash in.
While that first case got tangled up in legal debates over presidential immunity, Carroll filed a second lawsuit in 2022. This one leaned on a New York state law designed to help survivors of sexual assault from years past, and it included defamation claims tied to Trump’s post-presidency statements. That’s the case the Supreme Court just refused to touch.
Trump’s legal team has been throwing everything at the wall to get this verdict overturned. On appeal, they argued that Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan shouldn’t have allowed testimony from two other women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who’ve accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
They also took issue with the judge’s decision to let jurors hear the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, where Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about grabbing women. Trump’s lawyers claimed these moves unfairly bolstered Carroll’s case and made up for the lack of direct evidence in her specific allegations.
But Carroll’s legal team had a different take
They pointed out that she told two friends about the alleged attack right after it happened, and both testified at the trial. They also argued that Judge Kaplan was right to allow the additional evidence, since it speaks to Trump’s history of behavior and his alleged pattern of actions like the ones Carroll described.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the jury verdict in 2024, agreed. They ruled that the evidence questions weren’t the deciding factor in the case, meaning the verdict would’ve stood either way.
Trump himself weighed in on the Supreme Court’s decision. According to The Hill, in a post on Truth Social, he called the case “Fake” and claimed he’d never even met Carroll, despite a decades-old photo of them standing together in a celebrity photo line.
“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!),” he wrote. He went on to vow that he’d continue fighting what he called “Weaponization and Lawfare” against him, using all his “power and strength.”
This isn’t the only legal battle Trump is waging against Carroll
There’s another defamation case still hanging out there, one that led to an $83.3 million judgment against him. That case, which involves statements Trump made while he was still in office, is still on appeal. Trump’s team is arguing that presidential immunity should shield him from those claims, but if this latest Supreme Court decision is any indication, they’re not holding their breath for a win.
The Supreme Court’s move here is pretty standard operating procedure. When they decline to hear a case, it doesn’t mean they’re endorsing the lower court’s decision. It just means they’re not interested in revisiting it. But in this context, it’s a clear signal that Trump’s legal Hail Marys aren’t working. The $5 million payout is happening, and there’s no more wiggle room left in the system.
For Carroll, this is a long-overdue moment of validation. She’s been fighting this battle for years, and the Supreme Court’s decision puts an exclamation point on the jury’s verdict. For Trump, it’s just another loss in a growing pile of legal setbacks.
(Featured image: Montclair Film)
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