Supreme Court Rejects Trump Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Sexual Abuse Case

The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a $5 million verdict awarded to E. Jean Carroll in a case where a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the former magazine columnist and subsequently defaming her.

The justices rejected Trump’s appeal after a lower court upheld the 2023 jury verdict and dismissed his arguments that the trial had been unfair because the judge improperly allowed jurors to hear evidence relating to his alleged past sexual misconduct.

Trump has been battling Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle, since she published an excerpt from her memoir in 2019 alleging that Trump raped her around 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. Trump denied the allegations, insisting she had fabricated the claims both in 2019 while he was serving his first term as president, and again in 2022 after leaving office.

Trump expressed disappointment at the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal and described Carroll’s lawsuit as a “fake case”.

“I will continue the fight against this weaponisation and lawfare case against me, including the ridiculous defamation claim, with all of my power and strength. This case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another president or candidate,” Trump wrote on social media.

“This woman is not my type!” he added.

Carroll sued Trump in federal court in Manhattan. In 2023, jurors found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her, awarding $5 million in damages. However, they did not find that he had raped her, as she had alleged.

The Manhattan-based United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the verdict in 2024, ruling that evidence, including the infamous “Access Hollywood” video that surfaced during the 2016 US presidential campaign, demonstrated a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Carroll’s allegations.

Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the trial judge had “erroneously allowed testimony about multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations” to be presented to the jury, in violation of federal evidentiary rules.

“Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, whom she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximise political injury to him and profit for herself,” his lawyers argued in court filings.

In a separate case, the 2nd Circuit this year also declined to overturn an $83.3 million verdict awarded to Carroll after a jury found Trump liable for defaming her in 2019 when he first denied her allegations and accused her of fabricating the claims to boost book sales.

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