E. Jean Carroll, the New York journalist, has formally asked a judge to compel Donald Trump to pay the £4 million (approximately $5 million) she is owed from a jury verdict. The verdict found the former US president liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and subsequently defaming her after she publicly recounted the attack in 2019.
Lawyers representing Carroll submitted the request in a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, just one day after the US Supreme Court announced its decision not to consider Trump's appeal of the civil case verdict, which was initially reached in 2023. Carroll's legal team contends that Trump is unfairly attempting to prolong the disbursement of funds, despite his repeated unsuccessful challenges to the civil jury's decision.
The sum due to Carroll has now increased to nearly £4.6 million (approximately $5.8 million) when interest is included since the original verdict. Her lawyers have asserted that the court should now mandate the immediate release of this amount by the Republican figure. They argue that Trump has persisted in assailing Carroll, who is 82, and has made further defamatory remarks even while petitioning the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision, which was announced on Monday.
Trump responded to the Supreme Court's decision via his Truth Social platform, stating: “Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me.” The jury's verdict in the initial trial, which Trump did not attend, followed Carroll's testimony that she was sexually abused by him in the spring of 1996 in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Midtown Manhattan. Carroll first disclosed the attack publicly in a magazine article in 2019, during Trump's first term as president, at which point he repeatedly denied knowing her and accused her of ulterior motives.
On Monday, Trump vowed on social media to continue fighting what he termed a “Weaponization and Lawfare Case.” Carroll’s lawyers disclosed that Trump’s legal team contacted them shortly after his social media post, requesting a delay in the payout while they sought a reconsideration of the Supreme Court's decision. However, Carroll’s legal representatives, Roberta Kaplan, D Brandon Trice, and Maximilian T Crema, stated in their court filing that there is no valid reason to delay the payment, particularly as the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case showed no division among its nine justices. They wrote, “To date, Carroll has agreed to each of defendant’s many requests to delay the payment he owes her. Given the extraordinary lengths he has taken to avoid such payments and that each of those efforts has been denied in full, that cooperation ends today. It is time for him to pay Carroll.”
This case is separate from another legal matter where Trump is appealing £66 million (approximately $83 million) in defamation compensation awarded to Carroll by a different Manhattan jury following a January 2024 trial, where Trump briefly testified. The Supreme Court's decision follows an earlier ruling in 2024 by a three-judge panel at the second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan, which upheld the original jury's verdict and dismissed Trump's arguments that the trial was unfair.
Source: The Guardian, Associated Press