E. Jean Carroll receives nearly $5.63 million from Trump in civil abuse case

WASHINGTON: Writer E. Jean Carroll has received nearly $5.63 million from US President Donald Trump after a 2023 jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, according to court records.

The money was released to Carroll’s law firm on Monday despite Trump’s objections, five days after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan approved the disbursement from a court-supervised account. The amount covers the original $5 million civil award along with interest.

This is the first time Trump has been required to make a payment to Carroll. Over the past seven years, she has secured civil verdicts worth a total of $88.3 million against him since he first denied her allegation that he raped her around 1996 in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.

Trump has consistently rejected Carroll’s claims, describing them as a hoax. He has said he did not know her, accused her of inventing the allegation to boost sales of her memoir, and criticised the case as weaponisation and lawfare.

Last month, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal against the $5 million verdict, leaving that judgment in place.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team on Tuesday repeated a statement issued after Kaplan’s decision and said:

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.

Appeal court bid failed to stop payout

Last week, Trump’s lawyer asked a federal appeals court to prevent the money from being released, arguing that the president would face irreparable harm if Carroll carried out what the lawyer said was her plan to give the funds away, because the money would probably not be recoverable.

The lawyer also argued that it made no difference that Carroll had since said she would place the money in an interest-bearing account for her retirement, because she could still donate it.

The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million over a denial Trump made in 2022, although jurors did not find that he had raped her. In a separate case, a different jury in 2024 ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million based on his original 2019 denial while he was serving his first term in the White House. Trump is expected to ask the Supreme Court to review that verdict as well.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said in a statement:

Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury ​found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. We are pleased to report that she has received ​the damages payment the jury awarded her.