Judge orders E. Jean Carroll be paid $5.8M in Trump sex abuse and defamation case; Trump appeals

NEW YORK (AP) — Writer E. Jean Carroll can collect $5.8 million awarded to her after a jury found that President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed her, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed to stop the payment.

The president has already deposited the money in an account. The U.S. Supreme Court recently let the 2023 civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to release the money. The initial $5 million award has grown with interest.

The jury found Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store, and defamed her after she talked publicly about it in a 2019 memoir, during his first term as president.

Trump’s attorneys said Wednesday they would continue to challenge the verdicts, and accused his political opponents of using the legal system against him. They have appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Carroll’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The jury had reached its verdict — in a trial that Trump did not attend — after Carroll testified that a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the luxury department store turned violent. Trump repeatedly insisted that he never knew Carroll, now 82. He also accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives.

Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a January 2024 trial at which Trump briefly testified.

At that trial, Kaplan required the jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and only determine how much money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for comments he made about her as president.

Trump’s lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from telling the jury that the encounter with Carroll never happened.

Michael R. Sisak And Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press