Writer E. Jean Carroll has been paid more than $5.6 million that she was awarded in a federal civil jury verdict holding President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, according to a court filing released this week. The $5,625,005.48 disbursement, which included the original $5 million damages award plus accumulated interest, was transferred to Carroll’s law firm on July 9, marking a significant milestone in a protracted legal battle that has spanned nearly seven years.
The payment came after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the release of funds from a court-controlled escrow account where Trump had deposited money three years earlier following the jury verdict. The Supreme Court had declined on June 29 to hear Trump’s appeal of the 2023 verdict without any noted dissents, clearing the legal pathway for the money to be disbursed.
Carroll, 82, first went public with her allegations in June 2019 when an excerpt from her memoir was published in New York magazine. She alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in late 1995 or early 1996. According to Carroll’s account, what began as a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter turned violent when Trump attacked her. Trump denied the allegations, insisting he had never met Carroll and accusing her of fabricating the story to promote her book.
Carroll initially filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in 2019 over his public denials of her allegations. That case faced years of legal delays over complex issues involving presidential immunity before eventually going to trial in 2024, where a jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages. A second lawsuit was filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed sexual abuse survivors to pursue civil claims for incidents that had occurred in the distant past. This second case proceeded to trial first, in 2023.
At the 2023 trial, Carroll testified in detail about the alleged assault while Trump did not attend. A jury deliberated for less than three hours before concluding that Carroll had not proven rape under New York’s narrow legal definition of the term but had proven that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages for his October 2022 statements on Truth Social in which he called her accusations a “con job” and a “hoax.”
Judge Kaplan ordered the release of the funds after Trump’s attorneys made a last-ditch effort to delay payment. Trump’s legal team argued that the money should remain in escrow while they pursued a long-shot petition asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear the case. The Supreme Court very rarely grants such requests after having denied an initial petition. In his ruling, Judge Kaplan noted that Trump “has been stalling this case for years” and wrote that “it is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgment.”
A federal appeals court rejected Trump’s request for an emergency stay to block the payment hours after the judge’s order. Trump’s attorneys appealed Judge Kaplan’s decision almost immediately, but the funds were disbursed the following day. According to Carroll’s legal team, she plans to place the award in an interest-bearing account and use the money to fund her retirement.
The $5.8 million payment represents only a portion of what Carroll has been awarded in her legal battles with Trump. In the second defamation case heard in 2024, where Trump briefly testified, a separate jury found him liable for defamatory statements he made in 2019 when he called her fabrication accusation and said she was “not my type.” That jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages. Trump continues to appeal that verdict as well, arguing that his 2019 comments were protected by presidential immunity since he made them while serving as president.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that the payment represented the culmination of a lengthy legal process. “Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.” Kaplan called the Supreme Court’s denial of Trump’s appeal “the end of the line” in the case.
Trump’s legal team vowed to continue fighting, with a spokesperson stating that the president would proceed with his appeals and characterizing the litigation as politically motivated. Trump has appealed multiple times throughout the two Carroll cases and sought multiple stays from courts. In total, Trump now faces over $88 million in civil judgments stemming from the two juries’ verdicts against him, with both cases currently under appeal or facing additional legal challenges.