The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s appeal of a jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, ending his legal fight over a $5 million judgment. Hours after the nation’s highest court turned away his petition, Carroll’s lawyers filed a motion asking a federal judge to order the immediate release of the funds with accrued interest.
The Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal without explanation, as is typical of such orders, and no justices issued a written dissent. The decision leaves intact the verdict from a 2023 trial in which a jury found Trump sexually abused Carroll in the dressing room of luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s and later defamed her when he publicly denied her allegations.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, issued a statement saying the 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. His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions.”
In a court filing Tuesday night, Carroll’s lawyers asked a federal judge in Manhattan to expedite the process of releasing funds Trump deposited into a court-controlled account in 2023. The motion seeks payment of approximately $5.77 million when accounting for interest that has accrued, with all briefings to be completed by July 10.
The dispute dates back to 2019, when Carroll first publicly alleged in a New York magazine article that Trump had raped her in the 1990s at the Bergdorf Goodman department store. Trump denied the allegation. Carroll subsequently filed two lawsuits against him: the first for defamation in 2019 while Trump was president, and the second in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which permitted sexual abuse victims to file civil suits beyond expired statutes of limitations.
In an unusual procedural twist, the second suit—filed in 2022 and involving both sexual assault and defamation claims—went to trial first. In May 2023, a federal jury deliberated for less than three hours before determining that Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her through statements made on social media and in his October 2022 deposition. The jury awarded Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages for sexual battery, $2.7 million in compensatory damages for defamation, and $280,000 in punitive damages for defamation.
Trump contested the verdict by arguing that the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, improperly allowed testimony from two other women who had accused Trump of sexual assault and permitted the jury to see footage from the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about kissing and grabbing women without consent. Trump’s lawyers contended the evidence was inflammatory and violated federal rules governing what a jury could hear.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the jury’s verdict in 2024, ruling that the testimony was relevant and admissible under federal evidence rules that permit evidence of prior sexual assault allegations in cases involving sexual assault claims. The court found that the trial judge did not commit errors warranting a new trial. Trump lost a subsequent effort in June 2025 to have the full bench of judges reconsider, then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Carroll’s legal team argued the Supreme Court should decline to hear the case, contending Trump had failed to identify any legal questions warranting the court’s attention and that his framing of the case was based on misstatements of fact.
The judgment places Trump’s total civil liability to Carroll at more than $100 million when combined with an $83.3 million verdict from a separate defamation case tried in January 2024. That second case, involving Trump’s 2019 statements denying he knew Carroll and claiming she fabricated her allegations to sell a book, resulted from the earlier 2019 lawsuit filed while Trump was serving his first term. Trump is appealing that judgment at lower appellate courts and has signaled he may petition the Supreme Court to take up that case as well.
After the 2023 verdict, Trump deposited $5.5 million into escrow as required. Carroll’s lawyers noted that both sides had previously agreed payment would be released once the Supreme Court ruled. In a filing Tuesday night, Carroll’s team said Trump’s legal team had requested a delay, asking Carroll to agree to hold off while Trump considered asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its denial. Carroll’s lawyers rejected that request, writing that “after four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, it is time for this case to end.”
In a statement through his legal team, Trump called the case a “Democrat-funded travesty” and said he would “keep winning against Liberal Lawfare.” In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump expressed surprise at the decision and called the case a “Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met,” citing a decades-old photograph showing them together at what he claimed was a casual encounter.
Trump vowed to continue fighting the judgment, saying “I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.” He also criticized the New York Adult Survivors Act as “tailormade” injustice, referring to the law that enabled Carroll’s second lawsuit by creating a one-year window for old sexual assault claims to be brought.
Trump has approximately 25 days to file a long-shot request asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its denial, though legal experts consider such petitions rarely successful. Carroll’s attorneys asked the court to set a compressed briefing schedule so that any payment decision could be made quickly, requesting Trump respond to her motion within seven days rather than the standard fourteen days.
The case represents a rare instance in which a jury has found Trump liable in court for sexual assault. Carroll is the only person whose rape allegation against Trump has been upheld as credible by a jury verdict, though two other women have made rape allegations against him in the past.