A federal judge in New York on Wednesday ordered the distribution of $5.7 million in damages owed to writer E. Jean Carroll by President Donald Trump, stemming from a 2023 jury verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Trump, who has repeatedly denied Carroll’s accusations, has sought to delay payment through various legal maneuvers. The Supreme Court dealt him a loss on June 29 when it declined to hear his appeal of the verdict. Carroll’s lawyers subsequently asked a judge to order the release of the funds.
“This is the end of the line,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a court document filed June 29.
Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order on Wednesday to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, opening a pathway for the case to once again make its way to the Supreme Court. But unless a stay is issued by the Second Circuit, the appeal will not impede the collection of funds currently held in a court-controlled account.
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In her lawsuit, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. She also detailed the alleged experience in her 2019 memoir, “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.”
At the time, Trump refuted the accusation, telling a reporter from The Hill in 2019 that “she’s not my type.” Carroll filed a lawsuit shortly after, claiming he had defamed her character.
Trump continued to deny the incident, writing in a statement at the time that he had never met Carroll and that she was “trying to sell a new book; that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”
Carroll was unable to seek damages from her first lawsuit because of the 20-year statute of limitations. However, circumstances changed when the state of New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which allowed victims of sexual abuse to file lawsuits for time-expired cases for one year, beginning in 2022.
She sued Trump again in a separate case, seeking damages related to the alleged assault and for defamation after Trump called her allegations a “complete con job” on social media.
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