Supreme Court Lets $5 Million Sex Abuse Verdict Against Trump Stand
“The Supreme Court declined to review a $5 million civil judgment against President Trump, upholding a jury’s decision that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. The decision marks a significant setback for Trump, who had appealed the verdict, arguing that the trial judge erred in allowing certain evidence. Trump’s lawyers plan to seek Supreme Court review of a separate case involving Carroll’s defamation allegations.
President Trump had asked the justices to intervene after a jury found that he had sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by President Trump to review a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.
The announcement by the justices did not include any reasoning, and no public dissents were noted.
A second case that arose out of Ms. Carroll’s allegations also could be headed to the Supreme Court. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered Mr. Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said they plan to ask that the justices also hear that case.
Still, Monday’s decision is a major blow to Mr. Trump, likely marking the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Ms. Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.
It came after the court ruled in February that the president had overstepped his authority by issuing sweeping tariffs using emergency powers. That decision, which dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Trump’s economic and foreign policy strategy, drew sharp criticism from the president, who referred to the justices who voted against the tariffs as “fools and lap dogs” and a “disgrace to our nation.”
In May 2023, a federal jury in New York found the president liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll.
The jury agreed that Ms. Carroll, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently shown that Mr. Trump sexually abused her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store when the two crossed paths in the 1990s. Further, the jury found that Mr. Trump had defamed Ms. Carroll by posting a statement on social media calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” Throughout, Mr. Trump denied Ms. Carroll’s allegations.
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Among other evidence, the jury heard claims by two women in addition to Ms. Carroll that Mr. Trump had assaulted them, and an excerpt from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump can be heard bragging that he had a practice of grabbing and kissing women without consent.
After the verdict, Mr. Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asserting, among other things, that the trial judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, erred by allowing the evidence of the two women and the tape excerpt to be shown to the jury.
In December 2024, a three-judge appeals court panel upheld the jury’s verdict, finding that Mr. Trump failed to show that the evidence had harmed his rights to a fair trial.
Mr. Trump then asked the justices to weigh in and find that the trial court had erred.
In a brief to the court, lawyers for Mr. Trump described the evidence as “multiple decades-old, unverified and unrelated allegations.”
They also claimed that the appeals court had incorrectly applied the law and argued that the justices needed to step in because “if left uncorrected, these errors will recur in a host of future civil and criminal cases.”
Lawyers for Ms. Carroll asked the justices to reject the president’s petition.
In a brief to the justices, lawyers for Ms. Carroll wrote that the Supreme Court “routinely declines” to take up cases “when the questions presented are irrelevant to the outcome below.” They added, “such is the case here.”
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.“
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