WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by President Donald Trump to review a civil case judgment against him after a jury found that he defamed and sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll.
A New York jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages in 2023 over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media.
Trump denied the allegations and repeatedly claimed that the judge who oversaw the civil trial improperly allowed evidence to be presented that affected how the jury viewed him.
A second case that arose out of Carroll’s allegations also could be headed to the Supreme Court. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape.
Lawyers for Trump have said they plan to ask that the justices also hear that case. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal of that decision in September.
Still, Monday’s decision is a major blow to Trump and is most likely the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Carroll in a department store dressing room.
In response to the decision on Monday, Trump posted on social media, calling Carroll’s lawsuit “a Fake Case.” He added that he would “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”
In his post, Trump accused New York State of creating a law “for an instant speck of time, going back many decades, in order to wrongfully ‘nab’ me.”
He was referring to a 2022 New York law that gave adults who claimed to have been sexually assaulted a one-year window to sue, even if the period for doing so under the statute of limitation had expired. Carroll, an ardent supporter of the law, sued after it was enacted.
Carroll, now 82, writing on Substack, declared: “WE WON! THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s decision “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll”.
“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.
A federal appeals court agreed with the jury’s verdict last year and said a new trial was not warranted. Trump then asked the highest court to intervene.
The Supreme Court gave no details about their decision not to take up the case, as is customary.
It was Trump’s final hope of overturning the jury’s unanimous verdict and means he will have to pay Carroll the damages she had been awarded.
While Trump was found to have defamed and sexually abused Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape as defined in New York’s penal code.
Carroll, a former magazine columnist, sued Trump for attacking her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. The defamation stemmed from Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform in 2022 denying her claim.
Trump has said Carroll was “not my type” and that she had lied.
Source: Saudi Gazette