Two weeks after losing a bid to avoid paying the writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages for sexual abuse and defamation, President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to throw out a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment she won against him.
The two judgments against Mr. Trump came in civil federal trials in 2023 and 2024. In the first, a jury concluded a preponderance of evidence pointed to Mr. Trump’s liability for sexually abusing Carroll during a 1990s encounter, and defaming her after she went public in 2019.Â
In the second trial, Mr. Trump was held liable for separate denials made during his first term in office, including calling Carroll a “whack job” and claiming he had never met her. He repeated similar denials in public appearances, social media posts and in court, a pattern cited by Carroll’s attorneys during the trial.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, asked the jury to award Carroll enough to “make him stop” defaming her client. He has continued to deny her allegations.
In their filing Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s legal team argued that an appeals panel erred by failing to rule on whether Mr. Trump had presidential immunity when making the statements.
“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a President for his conduct in office,” the attorneys wrote.
The Justice Department, which is currently led by Mr. Trump’s former criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche, supports Mr. Trump’s effort to obtain Supreme Court review of the case. It argues Mr. Trump is protected from liability by the Westfall Act, because he was acting as a federal employee.Â
They argue he made the statements about Carroll “from the White House, in response to press questions, denying allegations of personal misconduct directly questioning his fitness for office.”
Kaplan declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.
Carroll testified that what started as friendly banter when she bumped into Mr. Trump in 1996, at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, led to an assault inside a dressing room. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing and claimed he never met Carroll.
Mr. Trump’s yearslong efforts to overturn the two verdicts have been rejected by lower appeals and district courts. He has also asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision not to consider his appeal of the $5 million case. Carroll ultimately received $5.6 million in that matter, including interest.
It is not clear how much interest has accrued on the $83.3 million judgment, which has been held in a court-controlled account since 2024.
