The US Supreme Court declined to hear Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a US$5 million (AUS$7.2 million) verdict in favour of E Jean Carroll in a case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the former magazine columnist.
The justices turned away the US president’s appeal after a lower court upheld the 2023 jury verdict, rejecting his arguments that the trial was unfair because the judge impermissibly let jurors hear evidence of his alleged past sexual misconduct.
Mr Trump has been battling Ms Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine, ever since she published an excerpt from her memoir in 2019 in which she alleged that Mr Trump had raped her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan.
Mr Trump denied Ms Carroll’s claims and asserted that she lied about the accusations both in 2019 while he was still serving his first term as president, and again in 2022 when he was out of office.
Donald Trump’s lawyers accused Ms Carroll of wanting to profit off the lawsuit. (Reuters: Ken Cedeno)
Mr Trump expressed disappointment in the court’s decision not to hear the appeal and called Ms Carroll’s lawsuit “a fake case” in a post to social media.
“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 to be!”
Ms Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan said in a statement the court had affirmed “once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict”.
“His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed, and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions,”
Ms Kaplan said.
The president’s justice department has launched a criminal investigation targeting Ms Carroll, as it has against several other adversaries of Mr Trump.
The investigation disclosed in May, was focused on whether Ms Carroll committed perjury in testimony, the criminal offence of deliberately giving false evidence or lying under oath during a judicial proceeding.
The investigation related to the two civil lawsuits Ms Carroll won against Mr Trump.
The case that led to the US$5 million verdict concerned Mr Trump’s statements in 2022, when he called Ms Carroll’s claim a “hoax” and a “con job” in a post on social media.
“This woman is not my type,” Mr Trump said.
Ms Carroll sued Mr Trump in federal court in Manhattan. Jurors in 2023 decided Mr Trump had sexually abused Ms Carroll and defamed her, awarding US$5 million in damages.
They did not find that Mr Trump raped Ms Carroll, as she had claimed.
The Manhattan-based second US circuit court of appeals upheld the verdict in 2024, ruling that evidence established a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Ms Carroll’s allegations.
Evidence included Mr Trump bragging about his sexual prowess on an “Access Hollywood” video which surfaced during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
Donald Trump claims Ms Carroll deliberately gave false evidence. (AP: Seth Wenig)
Mr Trump’s lawyers told the US Supreme Court that the trial judge “erroneously allowed testimony about multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations to be presented to the jury,” flouting federal rules governing the admission of evidence in a case.
“Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th President, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself,” his lawyers wrote in a filing.
The second circuit in the other lawsuit won by Ms Carroll in 2025 declined to throw out an US$83.3 million verdict reached by a jury in 2024, over allegations of defamation.
The lawsuit was pursued when Mr Trump first denied her claims in 2019, and asserted that she fabricated the accusations to sell her book.
Reuters
