Supreme Court filings confirm President Trump has paid roughly $5.62 million to writer E. Jean Carroll after the justices declined to review the civil verdict, but a far larger defamation judgment remains unresolved.
The filings, revealed this week, show that Carroll received the full amount, the original $5 million jury award plus accrued interest, after the Supreme Court on June 29 denied Trump's petition for certiorari without comment or recorded dissent. The justices had considered the petition at their June 25 conference. Trump's legal team had petitioned the high court in November 2025, arguing that the trial court improperly admitted testimony from two other accusers and the 2005 Access Hollywood recording, Just the News reported.
The payment ends one chapter of the Carroll litigation. It does not close the book. A separate $83.3 million defamation judgment, handed down by a different jury in January 2024, remains under appellate review and is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court on questions of presidential immunity and the scope of official speech.
After the justices refused to hear the case, Trump's attorneys filed a petition for rehearing. They also sought an emergency motion to delay payment. Both efforts failed. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the release of escrowed funds, and Carroll collected the $5.62 million.
The underlying verdict dates to a 2023 civil trial in which a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and writer, had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. She first made the accusation publicly in 2019, in an excerpt from her memoir published by New York Magazine.
The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $2 million on the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation, $5 million total. It rejected Carroll's rape claim under New York's legal definition in effect at the time. Trump appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the verdict. The Supreme Court's refusal to intervene left him with no further recourse on that judgment.
A Trump spokesperson said after the Supreme Court's decision that "the American People stand with President Trump" in demanding an end to such cases. Trump himself has repeatedly called Carroll a "liar," labeled the cases "hoaxes" and "con jobs," and described them as part of a pattern of politically motivated attacks. He has framed continued litigation as resistance against what he calls "Democrat-funded lawfare."
The far larger judgment grew out of a second lawsuit Carroll filed in 2022 under New York's Adult Survivors Act, a state law that temporarily reopened the statute of limitations for certain sexual assault claims. That suit included a battery claim based on the alleged assault and additional defamation allegations tied to statements Trump made after the first verdict.
In January 2024, a separate jury concluded Trump continued to defame Carroll and awarded her $83.3 million. Trump appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the judgment earlier this year, calling the jury's awards "fair and reasonable" and describing Trump's conduct as "extraordinary and unprecedented." The three-judge panel rejected Trump's argument that the Supreme Court's expanded presidential immunity ruling should shield him.
Enforcement of the $83.3 million judgment has been stayed after Trump posted a bond securing the full amount. He is expected to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, this time raising arguments that his statements as president should be treated as official conduct under the Westfall Act, a federal law that can substitute the government as defendant when a federal employee acts within the scope of official duties.
Trump's attorneys are also expected to invoke the 2024 Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States, which expanded the scope of presidential immunity. Some legal observers cited in reporting on the case have suggested that the immunity questions in the $83.3 million appeal may present a more substantial issue for Supreme Court review than the evidentiary arguments that failed in the $5 million case. The Supreme Court previously stalled Trump's appeal of the Carroll verdict multiple times before ultimately declining to take it up.
The Carroll litigation has unfolded across two distinct trials with different legal theories and vastly different damage awards. The first, in 2023, centered on the underlying assault accusation and Trump's initial denials. Carroll's legal team introduced testimony from two other women who accused Trump of similar conduct, along with the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump described grabbing women without their consent. Trump's attorneys argued that admitting that evidence was improper, an argument the Second Circuit and then the Supreme Court declined to endorse.
The second trial, in January 2024, focused narrowly on defamation, specifically, statements Trump made after the first jury had already found him liable. That jury's $83.3 million award dwarfed the original verdict by more than sixteen times. Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said after the appeals court ruling that the jury found "Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not."
The gap between the two awards tells its own story. A $5 million verdict, while significant, falls within a range courts routinely uphold in defamation cases involving public figures. An $83.3 million judgment is another matter entirely, and whether the Supreme Court views it as proportionate, or as an outlier driven by political hostility, will likely determine whether the justices grant review. The federal appeals court has already denied Trump's bid to reopen the defamation verdict on other grounds.
Carroll first filed suit in 2019, alleging Trump defamed her by denying the assault and accusing her of fabricating allegations. Trump denied the accusation on Truth Social, calling her claims a "hoax" and "politically motivated." He has maintained that position throughout both trials and all subsequent appeals.
The Supreme Court's docket has been crowded with high-profile cases touching executive power and constitutional boundaries. The justices faced a packed June schedule with dozens of pending opinions on executive authority, immigration, and elections, a workload that may have influenced the timing and disposition of the Carroll petition.
Whether the high court takes up the $83.3 million case will test how far the justices are willing to extend the immunity principles they articulated in Trump v. United States. If Trump's attorneys can persuade the court that his public statements about Carroll were made in his capacity as president and fall under the Westfall Act, the judgment could be vacated or substantially reduced. If the court declines review again, Trump faces a payout nearly fifteen times larger than the one he just made.
The broader pattern of politically charged cases reaching the Supreme Court has forced the justices into repeated confrontations with questions that blur the line between law and politics. The Carroll litigation sits squarely in that territory.
Trump paid what the courts ordered. The question now is whether a legal system that produced a $83.3 million defamation verdict, for statements made by a sitting president about his own accuser, is one that the Supreme Court can let stand without a word.
