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

The US Supreme Court officially closed the door on President Donald Trump’s final attempt to overturn a $5 million civil judgment finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll on Monday.

By declining to hear the president's appeal, the nation's highest court has put an end to a multi-year legal battle surrounding a 2023 New York jury’s unanimous verdict. The decision means Trump has exhausted his options to challenge the ruling and must pay the designated damages to Carroll.

As is typical for such orders, the Supreme Court did not provide any specific reasons or details regarding its decision to reject the case. Furthermore, none of the sitting justices, three of whom were appointed to the high court by Trump himself, issued a written dissent to the ruling.

The legal saga began publicly in 2019 when an excerpt of a memoir by Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine who is now 81, was published in New York magazine. In the text, she accused Trump of attacking her in the mid-1990s inside a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in Manhattan.

Trump has consistently denied the claims, using his Truth Social platform in 2022 to blast the accusations as a "con job" and a "hoax," famously stating, "This woman is not my type!" Carroll subsequently filed a civil lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court for sexual assault and defamation over the social media posts.

In May 2023, the jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused and defamed Carroll, though they rejected her claim of rape as it is strictly defined under New York's penal code.

Trump's legal team aggressively pushed to throw out the result, arguing that the trial judge unfairly allowed prejudicial evidence to influence the jurors. His attorneys specifically argued that the jury should never have been shown the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape where Trump is heard bragging about grabbing and kissing women, nor should they have heard testimony from two other women who alleged historical sexual misconduct by the president.

A federal appeals court rejected those arguments and upheld the verdict last year, prompting Trump to turn to the Supreme Court as his last resort. Following Monday's final rejection, Carroll's lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, issued a victorious statement.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said. “His multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed and today’s ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions,” she added.

Despite the finality of Monday's high court action, the broader legal war between the president and the writer is far from over.

Trump’s continued public statements disparaging the 2023 jury’s findings led to a completely separate defamation trial in Manhattan. A different federal jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll a massive $83.3 million in damages for those remarks. A panel of federal judges denied his preliminary appeal of that decision in September, and that judgment is currently being fought through a lower federal appeals court before it can potentially go to the Supreme Court.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s campaign and legal representatives fired back against the high court’s refusal to intervene, framing the entire matter as a partisan attack.

"The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes," a spokesman for Trump's legal team said. "President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again."

Meanwhile, the battlefront has expanded. The president's Justice Department has recently launched a criminal investigation into Carroll, shifting the focus onto whether the former columnist committed perjury during her testimony across the two civil trials she won against Trump.