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The US Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear President Donald Trump’s request to overturn a US decision of 5 million dollars in favor of E. Jean Carroll in a case where a judge found her guilty of sexually assaulting a magazine columnist and defaming her.
Justices rejected Trump’s appeal after a lower court upheld the 2023 ruling and rejected Trump’s arguments that the case was unfair because the judge allowed jurors to hear evidence of his past sexual misconduct allegations.
Trump has been at war with Carroll, a former journalist Elle He has since published an excerpt from his memoir in 2019 in which he alleged that he raped her in 1996 in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. Trump denied Carroll’s claims and said he lied about the allegations in 2019 during his first term as US president, and again in 2022 when he left office.
Trump’s Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation targeting Carroll, as it has done with other Republican presidential opponents. The investigation, which was revealed in May, focused on whether Carroll lied in testimony related to two civil lawsuits he won against Trump.
The case that led to the US $5 million judgment was related to Trump’s statements in 2022 when he called Carroll’s claim “false” and a “trick job” in his social media post.
“This woman is not my type!” Trump added in the post.
Carroll sued Trump in federal court in Manhattan. A jury in 2023 ruled that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her, awarding her $5 million. They did not find that Trump had raped Carroll, as he had said.
The decision is effective in 2024
The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld the decision in 2024, ruling on the evidence, which included Trump bragging about his sexual prowess. Reach out to Hollywood video that emerged during the 2016 US presidential campaign, established a “repeated, unusual pattern of behavior” consistent with Carroll’s allegations.
Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court that the trial judge “erroneously allowed evidence about decades-old, unsubstantiated and unrelated allegations to be presented to the jury,” in violation of federal rules governing the admissibility of evidence at trial.
“Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, his political opponent, until he became the 45th President, where he could increase his political damage and personal gain,” his lawyers wrote in the filing.
The 2nd Circuit in another case that Carroll won in 2025 refused to throw out an $83.3 million US verdict reached by a judge in 2024 for defamation when Trump began denying his claims in 2019 and saying he fabricated allegations of selling his book.
